DEMOCRACY 
AND  IDEALS 

IIIIIIBMB  A  IHIMIMMMMMI 

JOHN  ERSKINE 


A.?.   Lange 


Education  Deot. 


DEMOCRACY 
AND      IDEALS 

JOHN    ERSKINE 


DEMOCRACY; 
AND     IDEALS; 

A  Definition 


BY 


JOHN    ERSKINE 

PROFESSOR  OF  ENGLISH,  COLUMBIA  UNIVERSITY 

AUTHOR  OF  "THE  MORAL  OBLIGATION  TO  BE 

INTELLIGENT,"  "THE  SHADOWED 

HOUR,"  ETC. 


NEW  SJPJT  YORK 
GEORGE  H.  DORAN  COMPANY 


M 


COPYRIGHT,  1920, 
BY   GEORGE    H.  EK)RAN   COMPANY 


PRINTED  IN  THE   UNITED  STATES  OF  AMERICA 


TO 
ROBERT  IRWIN  REES 

IRA  LOUIS  REEVES 

CHARLES  W.    EXTON 

FRANCIS    F.     LONGLEY 

CITIZENS    OF   THE    REPUBLIC 


5  f  > 


PREFACE 

THESE  chapters,  with  the  exception  of  the  first  and 
the  last,  were  written  while  I  was  serving  as  chair 
man  of  the  Army  Education  Commission  with  the 
American  forces  in  France  in  1918  and  1919,  and  as 
educational  director  of  the  American  Expeditionary 
Force  University  at  Beaune,  1919.  The  first  chap 
ter,  in  its  present  form  recently  rewritten,  was 
originally  prepared  as  an  address  before  the  Asso 
ciation  of  Colleges  and  Preparatory  Schools  of  the 
Middle  States  and  Maryland,  in  November,  1917. 
"American  Character "  was  delivered  as  a  lecture 
at  Bedford  College,  London,  December  6,  1918,  and 
was  published  in  the  Fortnightly  Eeview,  May,  1919. 
"French  Ideals  and  American"  was  delivered  as  an 
address  before  American  troops  and  other  American 
audiences  in  France  during  1918  and  1919,  and  was 
published  May  20,  1919,  as  Bulletin  100  of  the 
American  Expeditionary  Force  University  at 
Beaune.  "Society  as  a  University, "  prepared  as 
an  address  for  the  opening  of  the  University  at 
Beaune,  was  published  March  15  as  Bulletin  18  of 
that  institution,  and  was  reprinted  in  the  Educa 
tional  Eeview  for  September.  "Universal  Training 
for  National  Service "  was  written  at  Beaune  in 
April,  and  was  published  in  the  Review  of  Eeviews 
for  October.  "University  Leadership"  was  de 
livered  on  September  24  as  the  opening  address  for 
the  winter  session  of  Columbia  University. 

vii 


viii  PREFACE 

Though  composed  at  different  times  and  places, 
these  chapters  were  intended  to  form  one  study  of 
the  American  character  and  its  needs.  The  first 
three  chapters  try  to  define  our  condition  at  the 
present  moment ;  the  second  group  of  these  chapters 
would  make  suggestions  toward  progress  and  im 
provement.  I  have  tried  to  express  here  from  sev 
eral  angles  a  central  conviction  that  we  in  the 
United  States  are  detached  from  the  past,  and  that 
this  detachment  is  the  striking  fact  in  all  our  prob 
lems  ;  that  if  in  the  future  we  are  to  become  and  to 
remain  a  nation,  we  must  collaborate  for  common 
ends ;  that  our  immediate  task  is  to  define  those  com 
mon  ends;  and  that  though  this  task  is  extremely 
difficult,  the  war  may  have  helped  us  toward  its  ac 
complishment — toward  a  definition  of  our  ideals  and 
toward  the  method  by  which  they  are  to  be  realized. 

If  in  these  pages  I  speak  primarily  as  an  educator, 
it  is  not  because  I  would  unduly  glorify  my  profes 
sion  or  blind  myself  to  interests  outside  the  school 
room  and  the  study.  Precisely  because  we  are  all 
concerned  nowadays  with  the  general  interests  of 
our  fellows,  I  believe  that  our  national  problems  are 
problems  in  education.  Our  task  is  to  provide  equal 
opportunity  for  all  citizens — which  means  equal 
preparation  to  make  use  of  the  opportunity.  We 
must  provide  also  for  the  sake  of  democracy  enough 
general  knowledge  of  life — of  other  lives  than  our 
own — to  insure  in  each  of  us  a  sympathy  with  the 
problems  of  the  community  as  a  whole ;  and  complete 
knowledge  of  life,  I  have  tried  to  say  with  emphasis, 
implies  training  also  for  the  proper  enjoyment  of 
leisure. 

Because  my  experiences  with  our  armies  in 
France  gave  me  great  hope  for  what  American  edu- 


PREFACE  ix 

cation  may  yet  accomplish  at  home  in  times  of  peace, 
I  have  dedicated  this  book  to  four  friends  with 
whom  I  worked  abroad  and  who  illustrate  the  type 
of  citizenship  that  seems  to  me  admirable.  Brigadier- 
General  Eees  of  the  5th  Section  of  the  General  Staff 
was  in  command  of  all  the  non-military  educational 
work  in  the  A.  E.  F.  Under  him,  Colonel  Beeves 
was  in  command  of  the  American  Expeditionary 
Force  University  at  Beaune,  Colonel  Exton  com 
manded  the  American  officers  and  men  who  were 
students  at  the  University  of  Paris  and  at  other 
French  universities,  and  Colonel  Longley  com 
manded  the  American  officers  and  men  who  studied 
at  British  Universities. 

JOHN  EBSKINE. 
Columbia  University,  April,  1920. 


CONTENTS 

I  PAGE 

DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS    .     .     .     .'...,     .     .       15 

II 
AMERICAN  CHARACTER 39 

III 

FRENCH  IDEALS  AND  AMERICAN    .     .     .     \     .     .     .      68 

IV 
SOCIETY  AS  A  UNIVERSITY       ........      95 

V 
UNIVERSAL  TRAINING  FOR  NATIONAL  SERVICE  .     .     .     118 

VI 

UNIVERSITY  LEADERSHIP   ,  133 


DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS 


DEMOCRACY 
AND    IDEALS 


DEMOCEACY  AND  IDEALS 


THIS  subject  of  democracy  and  ideals  ought  to 
interest  us,  even  if  there  had  been  no  war,  for  the 
ideals  of  any  citizenship  which  we  like  to  call  demo 
cratic  are  formulated  chiefly  in  the  hope  and  in  the 
mood  of  peace.  But  it  was  the  war  which  forced  us 
to  take  stock  of  our  democracy,  to  see  how  much  of  it 
we  had  on  hand  and  how  we  intended  to  dispose  of 
it;  it  was  the  war  which  compelled  us  to  define,  or 
to  try  to  define,  our  ideals.  We  found  the  task  not 
easy.  We  had  moments  of  impatience  when  Prussia 
challenged  us  to  state  our  objects  in  the  war,  and  our 
government  did  not  reply  with  a  facile  catalogue. 
We  should  have  liked  the  government,  of  course,  to 
state  precisely  what  we  were  aiming  at,  and  by  the 
statement  to  overwhelm  the  enemy  with  conscience- 
stricken  confusion.  Those  of  us  who  are  teacher^  ' 
and  educators,  however,  ought  to  have  known  how 
hard  it  is  to  define  an  ideal.  When  we  are  asked, 

15  < 


16  DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS 

as  we  sometimes  -are  even  in  times  of  peace,  just 
what  we  are  trying  to  achieve  in  our  schools  and 
colleges,  our  gratitude  flows  toward  any  man  or 
woman  who  can  answer  for  us.  There  may  be  rea 
sons  why  a  government,  acting  for  a  whole  country, 
should  hesitate  to  announce  its  war-aims,  even  if  it 
clearly  knows  them ;  but  now  that  peace  is  restored 
the  obligation  returns  upon  the  individual  citizen 
to  articulate,  at  least  to  himself,  what  he  would  make 
of  his  own  life,  and  what  he  desires  should  be  the 
character  of  the  democracy  he  lives  in. 

Most  of  us  do  not  know  our  own  ideals.  What  is 
worse,  many  of  us  do  not  understand  what  an  ideal 
is.  However  rude  may  seem  this  summary  of  our 
condition,  it  is  not  unjust.  The  ways  of  thought 
which  pass  for  wisdom  in  education,  in  politics,  in 
society  to-day,  make  little  use  of  the  concept  or  of 
the  word  "ideal";  they  are  far  from  the  civilization 
which  defined  that  concept  and  which  gave  us  that 
word;  they  point  somewhat  exclusively  to  nature 
and  to  various  things  called  natural — to  rights,  to 
instincts,  to  impulses,  to  emotions ;  and  consequently 
they  fail  to  consider  what  alone  makes  man  humane 
— his  intelligent  purposes  and  his  conscious  will  to 
pursue  them.  In  current  speech  whatever  is  ideal 
is  understood  either  to  be  the  undesirable  opposite 
of  the  real,  or  else  to  belong  to  a  better  world,  vainly 
dreamt  of  in  present  conditions.  But  an  ideal,  prop- 
$rly  darned,  is  both  the  child  and  the  father  of  the 
real;  it  is  both  desirable  and  practicable;  it  is  the 
solution  of  a  present  need  which  imagination  pro 
poses — imagination  at  once  directed  and  subdued  by 
experience,  at  once  fortified  and  restrained  by  the 
5rilL 


DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS  17j 

Ideals  so  defined  are  the  common  steps  by  which 
the  reason  marches.  The  maid  setting  the  table  first 
imagines  the  table  set,  and  then  imitates  that  vision. 
The  tailor  imagines  a  garment  made,  and  then  copies 
it.  The  merchant  contemplates  his  business  as  it 
should  be  six  months  hence,  and  then  makes  his  ac 
tual  affairs  adapt  themselves  to  that  foresight.  In 
each  case  the  ideal  is  directed  and  subdued  by  ex 
perience  ;  the  table  is  set  with  reference  to  the  needs 
of  the  diners  and  with  reference  to  the  supply  of 
food,  the  garment  depends  upon  the  material  and 
upon  the  needs  of  the  wearer,  and  the  business  will 
be  controlled  by  the  amount  of  the  merchant's 
capital  and  by  the  state  of  trade.  In  this  sense,  then, 
to  have  ideals  means  to  have  a  clear  vision  of  our 
immediate  purposes.  In  this  sense  my  subject, 
1 '  Democracy  and  Idealism, ' '  is  roughly  equivalent  to 
" Democracy  and  what  it  wants." 

It  is  not  quite  enough,  however,  to  know  what  we 
wrant.  An  ideal  is  not  genuine,  even  though  it  be 
practicable,  until  our  will  is  enlisted  to  achieve  it. 
Unless  our  ideals  are  fortified  by  our  determination 
to  accomplish  them,  by  our  disposition  to  master  the 
means  necessary  for  their  accomplishment,  it  is 
obvious  that  our  ideals  will  not  take  living  form — 
will  not  replace  in  experience  the  reality  which  begot 
them.  And  unless  our  ideals  are  restrained  as  well 
as  fortified  by  the  will,  unless  they  are  restrained  by 
a  resolve  to  accomplish  them  in  the  known  condi 
tions  of  life,  there  is  no  phantasy  so  wild  that  it 
might  not  be  called  an  ideal.  The  second  half  of  our 
definition,  therefore,  is  so  important  that  I  venture 
to  repeat  it ;  an  ideal  is  the  solution  which  imagina 
tion  proposes  for  a  present  need — imagination  at 


H8  DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS 

<once  directed  and  subdued  by  experience,  at  onoe 
fortified  and  restrained  by  the  will. 

With  this  definition  we  ask  ourselves  what  our 
ideals  are.  For  the  purposes  of  the  moment  we  re 
state  our  subject  as  a  double  theme:  "What  democ 
racy  wants,  and  how  resolutely  it  wants  it." 


ii 

If  an  ideal  is  a  solution  to  a  present  need,  we  must 
not  be  surprised  that  nations  and  individuals  find  it 
hard  at  short  notice  to  name  their  ideals.  It  takes 
time  and  reflection  to  discover  what  our  needs  are, 
or  to  state  them  rationally,  for  to  any  situation  we 
are  likely  to  react  with  our  whole  nature,  with 
emotions  much  more  than  with  reason.  Man,  as  we 
are  often  reminded,  is  rational  only  at  times,  and 
then  usually  under  compulsion.  If  the  war  was  for 
us  one  of  those  crises  which  forSe  men  to  think,  we 
could  not  expect  the  thinking  to  be  immediately 
fruitful  or  satisfying.  Not  only  is  it  difficult  at  all 
times  to  know  ourselves,  but  in  moments  so  dis 
tressed  as  those  of  our  entry  into  the  war  there  is 
danger  always  of  becoming  entangled  in  words — as 
in  this  instance  there  was  danger  of  believing  that 
our  ideals  were  liberty  and  democracy,  without 
stopping  to  reflect  that  the  enemy  might  also  be 
fighting  for  the  same  words  but  in  a  quite  different 
sense.  There  was  danger  that  our  ideals,  though 
more  than  catchwords,  might  not  be  completely 
'genuine ;  they  might  be  pleasant  to  contemplate  only 
so  long  as  we  need  not  put  them  into  effect.  There 


DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS  19 

was  danger  also  of  overlooking  a  fact  peculiar  to 
the  United  States,  that  our  ideals  have  been  re 
cruited  by  immigration,  and  that  the  ideals  of  many 
of  our  citizens  are  solutions  of  needs  discovered  in 
the  old  world,  but  not  perhaps  existing  here. 

This  fact  is  important  to  any  clear  understanding 
of  the  United  States.  We  are  a  nation  of  immi 
grants,  and  many  of  us  brought  to  these  shores 
dreams  and  desires  which  sprang  naturally  out  of 
the  conditions  we  left  behind,  but  which  have  little 
to  do  with  conditions  here.  For  this  reason  such  an 
inventory  of  our  ideals  as  the  war  compelled  us  to 
make  would  have  discovered,  at  any  point  in  our 
history,  that  not  all  our  ideals  were  genuine,  not  all 
American  or  democratic,  not  all  quite  what  we 
thought  they  were.  Some  of  our  forefathers  came 
here,  we  say,  for  liberty  of  conscience,  an  ideal 
which  they  had  imagined  after  experience  of 
persecution  in  Europe.  But  there  is  little  reason  to 
think  that  the  ideal  of  religious  liberty  was  at  first 
genuine.  In  his  ironic  tale,  "Endicott  and  the  Bed 
Cross/'  Hawthorne  portrays  the  pillory  and  the 
stocks  which  the  Puritan  liberty-lovers  set  up  at 
once  for  those  whose  doctrines  did  not  agree  with 
theirs.  If  religious  liberty  is  the  one  ideal  which 
we  have  most  nearly  achieved  in  this  country,  our 
will  to  achieve  it  has  been  developed  in  response  to 
needs  discovered  here,  not  remembered  from  over 
seas  ;  we  have  learned  here  that  religious  toleration 
is  necesary  to  the  well-being  of  the  modern  state. 
A  second  group  of  our  forefathers  came  here,  we 
say,  for  political  liberty,  for  equal  political  oppor 
tunity.  Not  only  have  we  failed  to  achieve  this 
liberty,  but  we  do  not  all  of  us  desire  to  achieve  it  5 


20  DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS 

it  is  not  yet  a  genuine  ideal.  On  the  contrary  we 
wish  to  retain  for  ourselves  some  political  oppor 
tunities  which  we  withhold  from  negroes  and 
orientals.  We  defend  ourselves  at  times  by  saying 
that  in  this  problem  economic  rather  than  political 
equality  is  involved.  This  defense  surprises  those 
people  who  have  thought  economic  equality  one  of 
our  ideals.  Of  course  they  were  wrong  to  think  so. 
When  we  talk  of  economic  liberty  in  the  United 
States,  we  deceive  no  one  but  ourselves,  so  long  as 
we  maintain  a  tariff,  or  so  long  as  one  group  of 
workers  demand  exceptionally  high  wages  at  the  ex 
pense  of  other  groups.  If  all  these  ideals  are  some 
thing  less  than  genuine,  we  perhaps  hope  that  at 
least  we  have  a  sincere  desire  to  provide  equal  op 
portunities  in  education.  This  ideal  might  indeed 
be  genuine  if  we  knew  what  it  means,  but  we  have 
misplaced  the  word  "equal,"  and  we  pedagogues 
most  often  give  our  attention  to-day  to  so-called 
systems  which  promise,  not  equal  opportunities  in 
education,  but  identical  results.  The  fashionable 
variations  of  the  kindergarten  will  see  to  it  that  the 
children  of  the  rich  have  the  same  tactile  sensitive 
ness  as  the  children  of  the  poor;  and  the  modern 
school,  by  abolishing  all  subjects  that  are  difficult 
to  teach  and  therefore  often  badly  taught,  will 
make  sure  that  our  ignorance  of  the  best  that  has 
been  said  and  thought  in  the  world  is  distributed 
evenly.  3 

But  under  all  our  present  and  past  ideals,  whether 
genuine  or  not,  lies  the  assumption  that  America  is 
an  Eldorado,  a  place  where  life  will  yield  wealth 
and  happiness  without  corresponding  exertion  on 
our  part — a  place,  that  is,  where  ideals  are  realized 


DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS  81] 

with  slight  effort  of  the  will.  This  flattering  hope 
served  as  motive  for  those  hazardous  voyages  in  the 
sixteenth  century  of  which  Hakluyt  preserved  the 
fascinating  story;  the  same  hope  reappears  in  so 
recent  a  book  as  "An  American  in  the  Making," 
Mr.  Ravage's  illuminating  account  of  the  motives 
which  bring  immigrants  to  this  country.  His  fellow- 
villagers  left  Eoumania  and  came  to  New  York,  he 
tells  us,  because  a  boy  who  had  previously  emigrated 
made  a  return  visit  to  his  native  hearth  dressed  in 
a  long  coat  and  a  silk  hat,  and  the  popular  imagina- 
iion  soon  defined  New  York  as  a  place  where  all 
.Roumanian  villagers  have  a  chance,  not  of  enjoying 
social  and  political  equality,  but  of  becoming  the 
leading  citizen — possibly  of  becoming  the  mayor.  So 
long  as  the  notion  of  Eldorado  persists,  of  our  coun 
try  as  a  land  of  special  privilege,  how  can  the  ideal 
of  economic  liberty  be  genuine  ?  What  we  are  after 
is  not  equality  of  fortune  nor  of  opportunity,  but 
success  for  ourselves  above  our  fellows,  or  else 
wealth  acquired  without  effort. 

The  thought  of  America  as  an  Eldorado  can  be 
made  to  illustrate  not  only  the  uncertain  state  of  our 
ideals,  but  also  the  brief  transition  by  which  they 
might  become  genuine.  What  would  it  mean  to  us 
if  we  developed  this  subconscious  sense  of  an  El 
dorado  into  a  clear  and  resolute  vision!  In  natural 
resources,  in  climate  and  in  location  our  country 
has  what  we  might  call  aptitudes  for  being  made  a 
land  of  magic;  but  it  must  be  made — it  will  not  be 
so  without  our  effort.  The  Eldorado  which  the 
immigrant  thinks  of  is  a  wild,  an  irresponsible 
dream,  the  product  of  his  past  needs,  of  his  former 
poverty  and  discouragement,  but  not  a  complete 


m  DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS 

ideal,  since  it  is  not  fortified  and  restrained  by  the 
will.  Were  we  determined  to  bring  this  dream  to 
pass,  were  we  willing  to  learn  the  science  and  the 
self-control  which  must  precede  this  achievement, 
the  old  fables  of  a  fortunate  land  would  come  true. 
But  to  live  by  habit  in  the  presence  of  an  obvious 
yet  neglected  opportunity,  may  perhaps  be  the  most 
disastrous  experience  for  morals  and  for  ideals; 
perhaps  we  have  become  used  to  shirking  the  re 
sponsibility  which  should  follow  upon  a  clear  sight 
of  needs  and  purposes. 


in 

What  were  our  ideals,  while  we  were  in  the  midst 
of  the  war?  And  what  are  our  ideals,  now  that  peace 
returns?  We  should  not  be  troubled  if  it  appears 
that  they  are  quite  new,  ideals  such  as  our  fore 
fathers  never  dreamt  of ;  the  needs  that  beset  us  to 
day  are  also  quite  new.  The  danger  is  not  that  we 
should  be  found  inconsistent,  not  that  we  should  be 
slow  in  defining  our  ideals;  ffie  danger  was  during 
the  war,  and  still  remains,  that  we  should  not  see 
our  present  condition  as  it  really  is,  and  that  we 
should  therefore  fail  to  orient  our  purposes  with 
reference  to  our  true  needs. 

During  the  war,  for  example,  we  were  in  danger 
of  orienting  our  purposes,  not  by  the  needs  of  the 
civilization  for  which  we  fought,  but  by  our  enmity 
with  Germany.  Were  we  not  beginning  to  define  a 
patriotic  school  as  one  in  which  the  German  language 
was  not  studied?  Were  we  not  beginning  to  define 


DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS  23 

a  good  opera  season  as  one  in  which  no  modern  Ger 
man  opera  was  produced?  Had  the  war  continued, 
how  long  would  it  have  been  before  we  were  con 
vinced  that  a  good  book  is  any  book  not  written  by 
a  German?  There  was  danger,  I  say,  of  turning  the 
emotions  of  a  temporary  crisis  into  articulate  and 
fixed  purposes.  Some  of  us  refuse  to  accept  them 
as  our  ideals.  Our  quarrel  with  the  Germans  was 
deep,  and  still  is;  the  grounds  of  it  can  be  stated, 
and  unfortunately  the  end  of  it  is  not  yet  seen.  But 
with  German  music  or  with  the  German  language  or 
with  German  books  when  they  express  the  nobler 
Germany,  we  have  no  quarrel.  Every  nation  needs 
the  best  that  other  nations  can  give  it;  we  should  be 
infinitely  poorer  without  Beethoven  and  Wagner, 
without  Grimm's  fairy  tales,  let  us  say,  and  in  the 
common  sphere  of  daily  life,  without  the  good  ex 
ample  of  German  industriousness.  As  for  the  lan 
guage,  if  there  is  to  be  a  generation  of  Americans 
who  neither  read  nor  speak  German,  and  if  there 
is  to  be,  as  now  seems  but  too  probable,  a  long  period 
of  suspicion  between  us  and  the  enemy,  it  is  not 
likely  that  the  Germans  will  imitate  our  stupidity  so 
far  as  to  neglect  the  study  of  English.  They  will 
understand  what  we  are  thinking  and  saying,  and 
we  shall  keep  ourselves  in  even  greater  ignorance  of 
their  interests  and  aspirations  than  we  have  hitherto 
been.  The  French,  by  way  of  contrast,  who  know 
better  than  we  do  what  it  is  to  suffer  at  the  hands 
of  the  German,  are  too  wise  to  cease  their  study  of 
him,  of  his  language,  and  of  all  his  works.  If  ever 
he  shows  a  disposition  to  be  a  good  neighbor,  they 
may  disembarrass  their  mind  of  him,  but  not  till 
then. 


24  DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS 

If  we  state  our  ideals  in  terms  of  genuine  spiritual 
needs,  as  we  now  understand  them,  we  shall  make 
clear  those  respects  in  which  we  would  gladly  ad 
mire  Germany,  the  accomplishments  in  music  and 
in  literature,  and  the  common  industriousness,  and 
at  the  same  time  we  shall  define  the  profound  dif 
ference  between  the  Germans  and  ourselves,  a  dif 
ference  which  the  signatures  at  Versailles  could  do 
nothing  to  heal.  From  the  utterances  of  modern 
German  philosophers  and  from  the  behavior  of  Ger 
many  in  the  war,  we  understand  that  the  German 
ideal  is  to  be  natural,  in  a  Darwinian  sense.  Nature 
is  the  scene  of  warfare  and  struggle,  in  which  the 
fittest  survive.  Nature  is  also  the  impulse  to  strive 
and  the  energy  which  sustains  us  in  the  struggle. 
This  is  the  prospect  which  man  sees  when  he  looks 
upon  the  life  of  other  animals;  it  should  become, 
thinks  Germany,  the  pattern  of  man's  own  conduct. 
To  survive  is  to  be  the  fittest,  and  the  means,  to  sur 
vive,  different  in  different  animals,  is  whatever  na 
ture  provides.  With  such  a  philosophy  the  worst 
brutalities  of  war,  the  most  cynical  betrayal  of  faith, 
become  excusable  because  they  are  natural.  It  is 
natural  for  an  animal  in  hunger  to  be  ruthless  at 
sight  of  food;  the  ruthlessness  is  unmoral,  merely  an 
indication  of  hunger.  It  is  still  more  natural  for 
fortunate  animals  to  push  the  less  fitted  to  the  wall ; 
the  impulse  by  itself  indicates  a  masterly  spirit, 
likely  to  survive.  This  is  what  we  see  in  nature,  I 
repeat,  and  man  may  if  he  choose  decide  that  it  is 
best  to  go  with  his  impulses,  to  be  what  his  propen 
sities  would  suggest,  to  do  what  he  would  have 
done  had  he  never  become  civilized,  but  to  do  it 
more  efficiently. 


DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS  25 

Over  against  this  decision  we  set  an  ideal  of  lib 
erty,  a  kind  of  liberty  which  we  might  not  have  de 
fined  for  ourselves  had  not  the  war  compelled  us. 
Granting  that  nature  seems  cruel,  rapacious  and 
vindictive,  we  believe  that  man  enjoys  liberty  only 
when  he  frees  himself  from  these  natural  tendencies 
—only  when  by  virtue  of  his  reason  and  his  will  he 
takes  control  of  ?  ature,  and  directs  its  tragic  caprice 
to  happy  uses.  The  wind  bloweth  where  it  listeth, 
and  the  leaf  blows  with  the  wind ;  but  man  can  move 
against  the  wind,  or  stand  still,  and  the  more  in 
telligent  he  becomes,  the  more  freely  can  he  choose, 
and  the  heavier  is  his  responsibility  for  the  choice  he 
makes.  If  to  continue  alive  be  the  only  ambition  for 
the  soul,  then  the  means  to  life  must  be  had  at  all 
costs,  even  at  the  cost  of  other  lives ;  but  reason  may 
decide  that  rather  than  pay  an  inhuman  price  it  is 
better  not  to  save  ourselves,  that  it  is  better  to  die 
than  to  make  the  life-hunger  an  excuse  for  cruelty, 
or  even  when  the  question  involves  no  peril  of  death, 
that  it  is  bett^  -  not  to  succeed  than  by  success  to 
become  ignob  e.  Eeason  may  teach  us  an  ideal  of 
freedom  in  which  the  best  parts  of  our  old  ideals 
will  be  summed  up  and  restated — freedom  for  each 
one  of  us  to  be  humane,  without  constraint  of  poverty 
or  persecution,  and  without  the  more  insidious  con 
straint  of  an  inadequate  philosophy.  When  Ger 
many  defends  the  sinking  of  the  ' '  Lusitania, ' '  on 
the  ground  that  war  is  war,  and  that  a  nation  which 
still  allows  negroes  t6  "be  lynched  is  in  no  position  to 
say  what  is  civilized  and  what  is  not,  we  refuse  to 
debate  with  her  on  such  grounds,  not  because  her 
argument  is  strong,  but  because  we  have  no  premises 
in  common.  The  Germans  sank  the  " Lusitania' '; 


26  DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS 

let  it  be  said  that  we  have  allowed  negroes  to  be 
burned  at  the  stake.  The  difference  between  us  and 
Germany  is  that  we  wish  to  live  in  a  civilization 
where  such  actions  are  considered  crimes.  This  dif 
ference  was  not  wiped  out  by  the  signing  of  the 
armistice  nor  by  the  signing  of  the  peace  treaty. 
In  the  early  part  of  the  war  the  German  propaganda 
tried  to  obscure  the  fact  that  the  government  at  Ber 
lin  broke  its  word  whenever  it  seemed  convenient; 
some  of  us  found  it  hard  to  believe  that  there  was  a 
whole  people  who,  in  the  accepted  meaning  of  the 
words,  had  no  sense  of  honor.  But  during  the  peace 
negotiations  Germany  burned  the  captured  French 
flags  rather  than  return  them.  Perhaps  it  was  an 
irresponsible  mob  that  made  the  bonfire,  and  per 
haps  the  German  police  are  too  disorganized  to  con 
trol  such  demonstrations.  But  did  any  German  ex 
press  any  regret  that  his  country's  faith  was  once 
more  in  question!  Just  before  the  signing  of  the 
peace  treaty,  the  Germans  sank  their  fleet,  though 
in  the  treaty  they  were  pledged  to  give  up  the  ves 
sels.  This  was  not  the  action  of  a  mob.  It  was  the 
deliberate  trick  of  a  faithless  government,  applauded 
unanimously  by  a  faithless  people.  If  we  need  fur 
ther  illustrations  of  the  difference  between  German 
ideals  and  our  own,  we  can  find  them  almost  daily 
in  the  explanations  which  former  leaders  in  the  Prus 
sian  government  give  to  account  for  their  defeat. 
Many  grave  errors  were  committed,  they  say.  It 
was  an  error  to  begin  the  U-boat  murders — not  be 
cause  the  submarine  campaign  was  dastardly,  but 
because  the  submarines  could  not  sink  as  many 
ships  as  was  expected.  It  was  an  error  to  shoot 
Captain  Frey  and  Edith  Cavell — not  because  the 


DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS  21 

German  apologist  reckons  even  now  with  the  obliga 
tions  of  chivalry,  but  because  those  two  executions 
steeled  British  hearts  against  Prussia,  for  this  gen 
eration  and  perhaps  for  centuries.  It  was  an  error 
also,  it  now  seems,  to  play  fast  and  loose  with  the 
United  States,  not  because  falsehood  and  treachery 
are  in  themselves  embarrassing  to  the  German 
memory,  but  because  the  United  States,  once  in  the 
war,  proved  more  formidable  than  Germany  had 
expected. 

In  one  obvious  sense  the  German  ideal  was  most 
dangerous  for  us  during  the  conflict,  for  at  that  time 
the  German  was  putting  it  into  execution,  and  the 
logic  of  it  impelled  him  to  annihilate  us  if  he  could. 
But  in  more  subtle  ways  also  the  doctrine  that  man 
should  be  natural  is  laying  siege  to  our  character, 
though  seldom  under  a  German  name.  I  refer  again 
to  those  educational  theories  and  alas !  to  those  edu 
cational  practices  which  would  train,  or  permit,  the 
young  to  develop  their  instincts  and  impulses,  rather 
than  free  them  from  the  tyranny  of  those  impulses 
and  instincts.  The  most  dangerous  form  of  this 
surrender  to  nature  is  the  cult  of  irresponsibility, 
of  anarchy,  which  just  now  spreads  fast  among  us. 
No  ideal  is  genuine  unless  the  will  is  enlisted  to 
make  it  real,  and  liberty  of  any  kind  is  but  an  empty 
word  unless  those  who  shout  it  and  call  for  it  will 
undertake  the  responsibility  of  getting  and  keeping 
it.  If  we  are  to  remain  free,  we  must  obviously  as 
sume  our  share  in  the  drudgery  of  freedom,  we  must 
exercise  forbearance  toward  the  idiosyncrasies  of 
others,  and  we  must  keep  our  promises,  even  though 
it  be  to  our  own  hurt.  In  the  maintenance  of  in 
tellectual  liberty,  a  liberty  maintained  by  discussion, 


28  DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS 

we  must  tell  the  whole  truth;  it  is  only  the  whole 
truth  that  will  make  us  free.^  Clearly  we  are  not  in 
the  mood  nowadays  to  assume  this  particular  re 
sponsibility.  We  dislike  to  tell  the  whole  truth 
about  Germany,  because  if  we  did,  we  should  have 
to  mention  some  admirable  qualities,  and  we  wish 
not  to  admire  the  enemy.  Yet  to  force  our  reason 
into  the  service  of  a  war  emotion,  is  hardly  to  enjoy 
intellectual  liberty;  rather  it  is  to  imitate  the  Ger 
mans  at  their  worst.  Similarly  we  dislike  to  tell 
the  whole  truth  of  our  opponents  in  political  cam 
paigns.  We  do  not  concede  the  numerous  successes 
of  the  administration  we  wish  to  supplant ;  if  we  did, 
there  would  be  nothing  left  but  to  point  out,  as  a 
lame  conclusion,  the  respects  in  which  we  think  we 
could  do  better.  It  seems  more  dramatic  to  charge 
the  other  party  with  complete  failure,  and  to  add 
broad  hints  or  even  plain  assertions  that  our  op 
ponents  are  crooks.  In  our  academic  world,  where 
freedom  is  essential  to  the  advance  of  knowledge,  we 
scholars  are  not  always  scrupulous  to  tell  the  whole 
truth  about  those  with  whom  we  differ.  If  we  are 
persuaded  that  school  boards  or  college  trustees  fail 
in  this  point  or  that  to  give  scholarship  its  proper 
encouragement,  we  think  we  strengthen  our  case  if 
we  suppress  the  fact  that  school  boards  and  trustees 
are  not  complete  failures,  but  have  in  fact  rendered 
service  to  education.  It  seems  prudent  to  many  of 
us,  moreover,  to  suppress  the  fact  that  not  all  teach 
ers  take  their  profession  nobly  or  even  seriously. 
By  telling  only  part  of  the  truth,  we  do  succeed  in 
arousing  public  clamor,  but  we  conceal  the  points  at 
which  intelligent  progress  might  be  made. 
The  advantages  of  liberty  are  so  obvious  that  we 


DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS  29 

pause  to  ask  why  men  are  not  careful  to  tell  the 
whole  truth,  are  not  careful  to  exercise  the  utmost 
self -restraint,  in  order  that  at  least  the  liberty  we 
have  achieved  may  be  handed  down  to  our  children. 
It  is  this  disposition  toward  anarchy,  a  more  dan 
gerous  enemy,  I  repeat,  than  the  German  philosophy, 
which  leads  us,  not  to  preserve  our  ideals,  but  to  loot 
them.  Is  there  some  liberty  already  achieved !  Then 
let  us  seize  all  we  can  of  it,  let  us  exercise  it  without 
responsibility,  let  us  exhaust  it  as  a  selfish  tenant 
might  exhaust  another  man's  land,  and  let  the  other 
man  restore  his  inheritance  as  he  may.  If  ideals  are 
attained  in  this  world  by  self-discipline  and  by  co 
operation,  there  is  always  a  temptation  for  the  mean 
spirited  to  seize  more  than  his  share,  without  co 
operating  at  all ;  if  only  he  is  the  first  to  do  this,  he 
is  fairly  sure  that  his  more  conscientious  fellows  will, 
for  a  while  at  least,  try  to  make  good  his  theft  by 
taking  extra  responsibilities  upon  themselves.  Un 
fortunately,  when  too  many  citizens  become  an 
archists,  there  are  not  enough  of  the  conscientious 
to  maintain  an  ideal  for  the  selfish  to  loot. 

If  the  ideal  of  natural  force  is  connected  to-d^^ 
with  the  practices  of  Germany,  this  ideal  of  anar  >n% 
of  freedom  without  responsibility,  has  in  recvnt 
years  been  connected,  at  least  in  popular  thought, 
with  the  events  in  Russia.  When  we  know  clearly 
what  is  going  on  in  Russia,  we  shall  probably  find 
that  other  issues  are  involved  than  the  ideal  of 
anarchy.  But  for  years  the  doctrine  of  philosophic 
anarchism  has  quite  naturally  prospered  in  Russia, 
and  has  quite  naturally  been  imported  into  the 
United  States.  Anarchy  as  an  ideal  takes  root  in 
countries  which  have  a  strong  government,  whether 


30  DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS 

autocratic  or  democratic.  You  can  neglect  your  re 
sponsibilities  only  when  some  one  else  does  the  work 
for  you.  Of  course,  if  your  government  shoots  or 
hangs  the  anarchist,  he  can  hardly  be  said  to  loot  his 
ideal ;  but  if  it  treats  him  in  any  less  severe  way  than 
by  killing  him,  his  philosophy  compels  the  govern 
ment  to  make  some  provision  for  his  existence,  since 
he  makes  none  for  himself.  Should  the  government 
collapse,  however,  it  is  no  more  possible  to  continue 
to  be  an  anarchist  than  it  would  be  for  Eobinson 
Crusoe  on  his  lonely  isle.  I  know  the  anarchist 
agrees  that  when  government  comes  to  an  end, 
anarchy,  the  negation  of  government,  must  also 
end;  but  you  must  first  be  an  anarchist  before  you 
are  willing  to  describe  life  in  terms  of  government 
and  governed,  rather  than  in  terms  of  ideals  and 
responsibilities.  The  fact  remains  that  in  a  state 
where  no  one  else  assume  your  responsibilities  for 
you,  as  on  Crusoe's  isle,  you  must  assume  them  your 
self  or  you  die.  You  are  back  in  that  state  of  im 
mediate  struggle  which  the  German  theorists  have 
glorified,  and  which  it  is  the  unhappy  fortune  of 
Eussia  to  illustrate  to-day. 

If  this  will  to  be  irresponsible  arose  in  Eussia,  it 
has  found  a  kindred  ideal  to  blend  with  in  that 
American  persuasion  I  spoke  of,  that  life  here  is 
and  should  be  an  Eldorado,  an  acquisition  of  un 
earned  wealth  and  happiness.  We  are  individualists, 
we  say,  but  in  frankness  we  should  describe  ourselves 
more  precisely.  The  Eenaissance  man  was  an  in 
dividualist.  He  desired  to  develop  to  the  utmost 
every  talent  he  had,  for  the  sake  of  a  large  career  and 
a  lasting  fame.  We  do  not  particularly  wish  to 
develop  our  talents  nor  the  resources  of  our  country; 


DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS  31 

such  a  program  would  involve  patience,  determina 
tion,  drudgery.  What  we  wish  is  to  avoid  responsi 
bility.  So  strong  is  our  selfishness  that  even  those 
political  philosophies  which  rest  entirely  on  the  ideal 
of  life  in  common  soon  disintegrate  when  imported 
to  our  soil.  The  socialists  in  America  to-day  are 
rapidly  becoming  anarchists.  The  ideal  of  the 
state's  responsibility  toward  the  individual  they 
still  cling  to,  as  all  anarchists  do,  but  they  say  noth 
ing  of  the  individual's  responsibility  toward  the 
state.  During  the  war  they  criticized  the  govern 
ment  and  they  refuse  to  see  an  essential  difference 
between  the  German  ideal  and  ours,  but  so  far  as  I 
know  they  at  no  time  said  or  did  anything  which 
would  increase  the  individual's  sense  of  responsi 
bility  toward  society  in  that  time  of  need.  While 
the  war  lasted  it  was  the  non-socialist  who  did  the 
social  things,  who  conserved  the  food  supply,  regu 
lated  prices  in  the  interest  of  society,  organized  the 
relief  of  the  destitute,  and  brought  medical  science 
to  bear  not  only  upon  the  care  of  wounded  soldiers 
but  also  upon  the  improvement  of  the  common  health 
after  the  war.  The  professional  socialist  profited 
from  the  carrying  out  of  what  were  once  his  pro 
fessed  ideals,  but  he  did  not  help  to  carry  them  out 
— or  if  he  did  help,  he  was  so  out  of  tune  with  his 
organized  party  that  he  resigned  or  was  dropped 
from  it.  In  the  confusion  of  our  motives  we  said 
that  the  socialist  was  spreading  a  German  influence 
among  us,  but  in  so  saying  we  failed  to  discriminate 
among  our  perils.  Whatever  else  Germany  was,  it 
was  a  highly  social  state,  and  though  it  may  have 
been  willing  for  war  purposes  to  see  anarchy  spread 
in  Russia  and  in  the  United  States,  it  always  knew 


32  DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS 

the  danger  of  anarchy  and  was  as  far  as  possible 
from  entertaining  it  as  an  ideal.  But  in  our  democ 
racy,  among  a  growing  number  of  us,  the  enjoy 
ment  of  liberty  without  responsibility  is  an  ideal, 
and  one  illustration  of  its  influence  is  this  tendency 
of  the  socialist  party  during  the  war  to  let  the  coun 
try  take  care  of  itself. 

But  without  responsibility,  we  can  have  no  ideal. 
A  genuine  purpose  implies  the  will  to  realize  that 
purpose.  We  shall  always  be  individualists,  let  us 
hope ;  we  shall  always  be  ready  to  stand  for  the  ideal 
which  to  the  best  of  our  knowledge  is  the  proper 
answer  to  our  needs;  we  shall  be  true  to  our  ideal 
even  though  public  opinion  disagree  with  us.  It  is 
only  in  the  brutal  state  of  nature  that  all  animals  of 
the  same  kind  conform  approximately  to  one  pro 
gram  of  conduct;  when  the  mind  is  free,  there  will 
be  differences  of  opinion  and  increasing  differences 
of  character,  and  there  will  be  occasional  martyrs. 
Unfortunately  there  are  no  martyrs  in  our  democ 
racy.  Martyrdom  is  an  art  for  which  we  have  no 
longer  the  gift.  We  are  willing  to  preach  doctrines 
that  get  us  into  trouble,  but  we  are  not  willing  to 
abide  by  the  consequences  or  to  sustain  the  responsi 
bilities  of  our  preaching.  At  the  beginning  of  our 
part  in  the  war,  two  boys  conected  with  my  own 
university  were  arrested  for  attempting  to  print  a 
pamphlet  which  advised  opposition  to  the  draft  law. 
Under  the  guidance  of  counsel  supposed  to  be  ma 
ture,  and  no  doubt  in  conformity  with  their  own 
impulses,  they  pleaded  that  they  were  indeed  re 
sponsible  for  the  pamphlet,  but  that  if  they  had  not 
been  arrested  for  another  twenty-four  hours  they 
would  have  changed  it  so  as  not  to  commit  a  seditious 


DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS  33 

act.  A  graduate  of  the  university  said  to  me  shortly 
afterward  that  these  young  men  were  a  disgrace  to 
us.  I  agreed  with  him,  but  added  that  my  reason  for 
thinking  them  a  disgrace  to  the  university  was  per 
haps  not  the  same  as  his.  If  they  had  been  genuinely 
opposed  to  the  draft  law,  and  had  felt  compelled  to 
preach  against  it,  and  had  maintained  their  position 
before  the  court,  I  should  still  have  thought  them  in 
the  wrong,  and  I  should  have  felt  that  any  self- 
respecting  government  must  punish  them,  but  I 
should  not  have  thought  their  conduct  disgraceful. 
If  they  came  into  a  classroom  in  literature,  might 
not  the  teacher  be  holding  up  for  their  admiration  a 
Milton  or  a  Thoreau  or  some  other  honored  spirit 
who  with  no  thought  of  shirking  responsibility  to 
the  state,  yet  in  some  point  felt  obliged  to  stand  out 
against  the.majority,  and  who  was  perhaps  in  error, 
yet  was  staunch  to  a  sincere  ideal?  To  waste  the 
time  of  the  community,  however,  by  preaching  a  re 
volt  which  you  are  not  willing  to  suffer  for,  is  to 
behave  no  more  nobly  than  the  naughty  boys  on  the 
street  corner,  who  try  to  annoy  the  policeman  with 
out  getting  caught. 


IV 

If  it  was  difficult  to  know  what  our  ideals  were 
while  the  war  was  in  progress,  it  is  not  easier  to 
name  them  now  that  we  must  reorganize  a  badly 
shaken  world.  To  some  degree  we  all  think  in  terms 
of  former  intellectual  momentum,  we  say  over  again 
the  phrases  that  once  expressed  genuine  ideals  but 


B4  DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS 

which  have  no  reference  now  to  our  desires  nor  to 
our  needs.  When  other  nations  fall  into  the  same 
confusion  we  charge  them  with  insincerity  or  with  an 
excessive  fondness  for  irresponsible  oratory,  forget 
ting  that  the  weakness  is  common  to  the  human  race. 
What  we  now  must  do,  is  to  examine  frankly  our 
present  needs,  and  to  give  our  utmost  energy  to  sat 
isfying  them.  We  shall  find  our  ideals  as  soon  as  we 
see  the  things  that  cry  to  be  cured. 

In  our  American  life  there  has  always  been  danger 
that  we  should  not  think  of  the  country  as  a  whole. 
Our  territory  is  large ;  it  is  easy  for  the  sections  of 
it  to  forget  each  other.  Those  racial  elements  also 
which  here  forget  their  past  and  join  hands  to  make 
a  new  world  and  a  new  democracy,  it  is  easy  for 
them  to  fuse  only  in  part,  to  unite  only  so  far  as 
seems  necessary  for  political  coherence,  to  reserve 
to  themselves  some  racial  inheritance  which  should 
become  a  national  asset.  Unfortunately  we  are  not 
yet  ready  to  make  of  the  United  States  a  melting- 
pot  ;  like  other  groups  of  men  who  talk  much  of  unity 
while  clinging  to  different  ideals,  we  are  willing  to 
cast  into  the  common  treasury  only  those  posses 
sions  we  care  least  for.  We  were  annoyed  to  discover 
that  large  groups  of  German-Americans  dreamt  of 
implanting  throughout  the  land  the  seeds  of  an  ex 
clusively  German  culture.  There  are  groups  of 
American  citizens  of  British  descent  who  dream  just 
as  sincerely  of  educating  this  country  in  British  ways 
of  thought.  Other  groups  with  other  inheritance 
have  a  similar  ambition.  A  few  evenings  ago  I  was 
introduced  to  a  young  Yiddish  poet,  an  Ajnerican 
citizen,  reported  to  haver  much  talent.  I  expressed 
to  him  my  regret  not  to  know  his  verses,  since  I 


DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS  S5 

could  not  read  Yiddish.  "You  might  learn  Yiddish 
and  read  my  poems, "  he  remarked  quite  casually. 
I  felt  impelled  to  retort,  "You  might  learn  English 
and  read  mine."  Our  true  ideal  is  not  to  become 
the  heir  of  any  one  race ;  we  who  are  of  all  peoples 
must  become  American.  We  are  not  ashamed,  but 
proud,  that  the  English  we  speak  is  American  Eng 
lish  ;  if  we  are  to  improve  our  speech  it  will  not  Be  by 
recovering  a  former  purity,  but  by  adding  to  what 
we  already  have  the  best  that  other  languages  can 
teach  us.  And  our  speech,  so  gathered  and  fused, 
will  be  the  illustration  of  our  whole  culture. 

But  just  how  are  we  to  build  up  a  national  life? 
What  are  to  be  the  items  of  our  life  in  common? 
We  cannot  answer  these  questions  until  we  have 
studied  our  common  needs.  This  present  volume  is 
an  essay  toward  such  a  study.  In  a  general  way, 
however,  it  is  not  impossible  to  forecast  the  method 
whereby  the  rich  elements  that  pour  in  upon  us 
may  be  seized  and  united  in  the  spirit  of  our  nation. 
We  have  but  to  remember  that  nationalism  or  patri 
otism  begins  in  the  art  of  being  a  good  neighbor. 
We  owe  it  to  the  community  in  which  we  live  to 
share  its  life;  the  community  owes  it  to  us  that  we 
should  make  our  contribution  to  its  life.  We  shall 
remain  individuals;  we  shall  continue  to  have  our 
private  affairs.  But  in  the  things  that  concern  all 
men, — health,  safety,  education,  art, — all  men  should 
act  together.  I  know  that  the  word  "nationalism" 
has  terrors  for  those  who  fear  the  crimes  and  tragic 
errors  sometimes  committed  in  the  name  of  patriot 
ism.  But  if  one  is  to  any  extent  a  good  neighbor, 
he  will  soon  feel  the  urge  of  conscience  toward  larger 
responsibility  than  the  township  circumscribes;  he 


36  DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS 

will  discover  his  duty  toward  the  county,  the  state, 
the  whole  nation.  If  his  imagination  is  sufficiently 
generous,  he  will  discover  the  neighborly  duties  of 
his  country  toward  other  countries.  In  this  sense 
he  will  become  both  national  and  international.  He 
would  belong  not  to  one  race  but  to  the  human  race. 
At  the  same  time  he  would  belong  not  to  all  nations 
but  to  one  nation.  The  difference  is  important.  We 
Americans  do  not,  and  can  not,  believe  that  one 
race  is  necessarily  and  inherently  superior  to  an 
other.  We  ourselves  are  to  be  the  component  of  all 
races.  But  our  common  interests  will  make  us  a 
nation,  provided  we  begin,  each  in  his  community, 
to  be  good  neighbors.  Those  well-meaning  but  shal 
low  dreamers  who  preach  internationalism  yet  scorn 
nationalism,  are  really  fascinated  by  the  hope  that 
a  benevolent  attitude  toward  mankind  in  general 
may  relieve  us  from  responsibility  toward  any  hu 
man  being  in  particular. 

Of  those  ideals  that  concern  us  all,  so  long  as  we 
are  good  neighbors,  education  is  the  very  first.  We 
desire  it  for  ourselves,  and  unless  selfishness  blinds 
us  utterly,  we  will  see  that  our  neighbor  has  it  too. 
Without  a  common  education  we  can  neither  work 
together  nor  play  together;  and  without  universal 
education  democracy  is  an  unstable  venture.  Those 
who  have  knowledge  are,  as  it  were,  to  that  extent 
in  the  secret  of  life,  and  they  own  the  world.  If 
all  men  are  to  own  the  world,  we  must  all  have  knowl 
edge.  Our  business  belongs  to  us  only  if  we  under 
stand  it,  otherwise  it  belongs  to  the  manager  or  the 
bookkeeper  or  whoever  directs  it.  The  railroads 
belong  to  the  people  only  if  the  people  understand 
railroading — which  of  course  they  do  not;  and  the 


DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS  37 

railroads  therefore  belong  to  those  who  actually 
direct  them,  whether  or  not  the  government  is  said 
to  control  them.  We  are  on  the  point  of  realizing, 
perhaps,  that  social  problems  are  intellectual  and 
spiritual  rather  than  economic.  We  begin  to  see  the 
stupidity  of  keeping  the  bricklayer  in  ignorance  of 
the  plans  of  the  building,  and  the  bricklayer  himself 
begins  to  be  uneasy.  The  workingman  in  general 
begins  to  suspect  that  some  secret,  some  power,  is 
being  kept  from  him  unfairly;  for  the  most  part  he 
thinks  the  power  must  be  money,  and  he  therefore 
asks  for  higher  wages,  but  straightway  he  finds  him 
self  no  better  off,  no  less  uneasy.  Money  is  only  the 
crudest  form  of  the  power  we  all  seek.  The  work 
man  is  already  beginning  to  ask  for  complete  knowl 
edge  of  the  business  or  craft  to  which  his  skill  con 
tributes;  the  bricklayer  will  lay  bricks,  but  he  will 
think  like  an  architect.  And  the  citizen,  let  us  hope, 
will  ask  to  be  taught  the  whole  business  of  his  gov 
ernment.  Only  in  this  way  shall  we  have  peace  of 
mind  or  the  barest  political  freedom;  for  until  we 
share  the  knowledge  that  controls  our  lives,  we  shall 
continue  to  be  directed  by  the  same  type  of  man  that 
directs  us  now — that  is,  by  the  men  who  know  more 
than  we  do. 

To  be  good  neighbors  and  to  study  life  together! 
This  seemed  to  be  for  a  moment  at  least  the  genuine 
ideal  of  the  two  million  American  citizens  who  made 
up  our  armies  abroad.  They  spoke  in  many  lan 
guages,  but  they  were  learning  to  speak  and  to  un 
derstand  each  other  in  one.  They  were  of  all  origins, 
but  they  were  feeling  for  a  common  future.  On  the 
soil  of  France  the  German  blows  were  forging  an 
American  nation.  Or  so  it  seemed,  at  least.  If  the 


38  DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS 

appearance  should  in  the  end  prove  an  illusion,  the 
war  would  indeed  be  for  us,  not  a  crusade  ending 
in  a  spiritual  rescue,  but  only  a  slaughter  that  filled 
up  the  world's  graveyards. 


II 

AMERICAN  CHARACTER 


AT  some  time  or  other  we  all  boast  of  the  country 
to  which  we  belong.  The  American  is  said  to  be 
extremely  boastful.  To  understand  him,  however, 
it  is  well  to  observe  that  he  boasts  of  his  country,  not 
of  his  race,  and  that  he  is  quite  aware  of  the  differ 
ence  between  the  man  who  has  a  country  and  the 
man  who  belongs  to  a  race,  and  that  he  believes  the 
difference  is  in  his  favor.  He  knows  better  than  to 
think  of  Americans  as  derived  from  a  common  stock, 
and  he  prefers  not  to  think  of  them  as  conserving 
their  virtues  from  their  fathers.  When  he  boasts 
of  what  his  fellow-citizens  are,  or  what  they  can  do, 
he  would  express  his  faith  that  in  origin  they  are 
but  common  men,  but  that  being  Americans  they 
have  had  advantages.  The  raw  material  of  the 
American  character,  he  believes,  is  not  the  refine 
ment  of  one  blood  nor  the  blend  of  many  races,  but 
the  plain  substance  of  human  nature ;  and  this  raw 
material,  he  would  say,  is  brought  to  perfection  by 
a  happy  way  of  life,  which  usually  he  does  not  define 
beyond  his  conviction  that  there  is  in  it  much  hope, 
many  dreams,  and  little  of  the  past.  Twenty  years 
ago,  perhaps,  this  generalization  would  not  have 

39 


40  DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS 

been  true;  perhaps  it  will  not  hold  for  to-morrow; 
but  if  you  would  understand  the  Americans  of  the 
moment,  the  soldiers  who  made  their  appearance  in 
the  last  act  of  the  war,  the  citizen  army  in  France 
and  the  citizen  workers  at  home,  wlio  suddenly,  al 
most  convulsively,  realized  themselves  as  agnation, 
you  must  begin  by  noting  that  they  did  not  realize 
themselves  as  a  race. 

You  must  begin  with  this  fact  because  there  the 
American  begins  to  differ  from  the  Englishman,  and 
let  me  add,  from  the  German.  In  his  "  Address  to 
the  Americans, "  Mr.  Chesterton  made  a  striking 
contrast  between  the  American  national  ideal  and 
the  German.  Germans,  he  said  in  effect,  are  all  of 
one  race  but  of  many  ranks ;  Americans  are  of  many 
races,  but  wish  to  be  of  one  rank.  He  was  obvi 
ously  opposing  to  that  hope  of  democracy  which 
human  nature  very  generally  entertains  to-day,  that 
other  conception  of  one  peculiar  race,  God-favored, 
against  which  human  nature  has  very  recently  had 
to  arm  itself.  But  if  we  were  to  change  Mr.  Ches 
terton's  contrast  so  that  it  should  carry  no  flavor 
of  condemnation  but  simply  a  statement  of  the  dif 
ference  between  neighbors,  the  Americans  would 
consider  it  proper  to  say  that  the  English  are  of  one 
race;  that  they  prize  the  traditions  which  can  come 
only  with  race  consciousness ;  that  they  think  better 
of  the  English-born  simply  because  he  is  born  of 
English  blood ;  that  the  typical  American,  if  he  were 
an  Englishman — that  is,  if  he  had  a  race  tradition 
• — would  naturally  set  a  high  value  upon  it,  and  would 
think  favorably  of  a  new  acquaintance  who  could 
introduce  himself  as  of  the  same  inheritance;  but 
that  the  American,  having  come  from  all  races, 


AMERICAN  CHARACTER  41 

makes  it  a  point  of  honor  not  to  ask  a  newcomer 
of  what  race  he  is — makes  it  a  point  of  honor  to 
keep  to  himself,  if  he  has  it,  or  to  suppress  as  far  as 
possible,  the  sentiment  for  traditional  things — for 
the  family  line,  for  the  inherited  language,  even  for 
the  home  in  the  sense  of  a  fixed  hearth. 

The  reason  for  this  American  renunciation  of  race 
might  seem  to  be  primarily  what  is  suggested  in 
Mr.  Chesterton's  contrast,  that  we  in  the  United 
States  have  come  from  the  ends  of  the  earth,  and 
that  in  order  to  live  together  at  all  we  are  obliged 
to  slip  lightly  over  matters  of  divergence,  and  are 
therefore  obliged  to  forget  differences  of  origin, 
which  form  our  chief  divergence.  Certainly  there 
is  some  truth  in  this  explanation.  But  it  was  not  an 
American  who  first  spoke  of  the  United  States  as  a 
"melting  pot,"  and  to  one  who  knows  the  country 
the  phrase  is  not  a  true  description.  If  it  were,  the 
race  would  begin  after  the  melting  is  done.  Such 
an  enforced  compromise  as  characterizes  any  so 
ciety  recruited  from  varied  sources  is  but  a  tem 
porary  expedient,  and  if  there  were  no  other  reason 
why  Americans  think  of  themselves  merely  as  a 
country  or  nation,  never  as  a  race,  we  might  expect 
this  explanation  to  become  invalid  with  time;  we 
might  expect  that  at  least  the  children  of  those  who 
so  compromise  would  consider  their  way  of  life  as 
at  last  settled  and  traditional,  and  their  ideals  as 
beginning  to  be  racial.  It  does  not  appear,  however, 
that  any  traditions  are  growing  in  the  United  States, 
nor  does  the  promise  of  any  show  itself  even  at  this 
moment  when  the  idea  of  nationality  has  become 
with  us,  as  with  other  people,  a  living  force. 

The  truth  is,  that  if  Americans  were  to  let  their 


42  DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS 

minds  dwell  on  their  personal  or  family  history, 
upon  the  places  in  which  their  family  life  began, 
our  whole  country  would  be  aching  with  home-sick 
ness.  The  end  of  most  philosophies  is  to  enable 
men  to  live  happily  with  the  facts  that  particularly 
affect  them.  We  have  evolved  a  philosophy  which 
enables  us  to  live  cheerfully  with  the  great  Amer 
ican  fact  that  all  of  us  have  left  the  house,  and 
most  of  us  the  city,  where  we  were  born.  This  is 
obviously  true  of  the  immigrant;  it  is  equally  true 
of  the  New  Englanders  who  have  moved  West,  of 
the  Southerners  who  have  moved  North,  and  of  the 
Westerners  who  have  come  to  Eastern  cities.  The 
American  man  or  woman  who  at  the  age  of  thirty  is 
still  living  in  the  house  in  which  he  or  she  was  born 
is  hard  indeed  to  find.  The  average  soldier  in  the 
French  army  to-day  may  easily  have  come  from  a 
family  hearth  which  has  burned  continuously  for  a 
hundred  or  a  hundred  and  fifty  years.  Of  the  Amer 
ican  army  probably  no  more  than  two  or  three  per 
cent  were  living  at  the  time  of  their  enlistment  in 
the  home  of  their  birth.  Their  families  have  come 
recently  from  Europe  or  else  they  have  moved  about 
in  the  United  States.  The  causes  of  this  moving  are 
interesting,  but  not  for  the  moment  important;  the 
important  thing  is  that  when  an  American  thinks 
of  his  country  he  does  not  think  of  the  soil,  nor  of 
the  homestead,  nor  of  his  inherited  language,  for  to 
do  so  would  be  to  cultivate  retrospect  and  regret; 
rather  he  thinks  of  the  ideals  for  which  his  country 
stands,  of  the  future,  of  that  world  of  affections  in 
which  he  instinctively  recognizes  a  career  for  him 
self  and  a  common  meeting-place  with  his  fellows. 
Is  the  American,  then,  an  idealist?  He  certainly 


AMERICAN  CHARACTER  48 

is  so  in  the  sense  that  he  lives  in  the  world  of  pros 
pects  and  hopes.  Therefore  he  is  willing  to  rebuild 
his  cities  with  that  incessant  tearing  up  of  streets 
and  remodeling  of  houses  which  to  the  European 
is  a  nightmare  orgy  of  change.  If  he  has  a  vision 
of  any  improvement  which  could  be  made  in  his 
boyhood  home,  and  if  he  can  find  the  means,  the 
house  is  probably  doomed.  Only  a  few  churches  in 
America,  and  no  other  buildings,  may  be  warranted 
safe  against  this  passion  for  bringing  the  world  up 
to  date.  Colleges  and  universities  in  the  United 
States  perhaps  conserve  more  pious  memories  than 
any  other  kind  of  public  institution,  yet  some  of  our 
large  universities  have  transported  themselves 
bodily  to  a  new  site,  with  the  result  that  the  alumni 
who  return  to  venerate  Alma  Mater  must  thereafter 
do  so  strictly  in  the  world  of  imagination,  paying 
homage  to  an  idea,  since  there  remains  on  the  cam 
pus  neither  stick  nor  stone  with  power  to  recall  a 
single  minute  of  their  youth.  In  these  removals 
the  motive  is  a  true  idealism,  an  imagining  of  the 
university  in  a  large  and  eternal  world,  together 
with  the  will  to  realize  the  dream;  the  accomplish 
ment,  however,  is  perhaps  a  bit  troubling,  since  a 
shrine  abandoned  will  send,  its  own  petitions  after 
the  departing  worshipers. 

The  American  habit  of  living  in  a  world  of  pros 
pects  and  hopes  is  still  more  troubling  in  an  indi 
vidual  who  happens  to  be  provincial  in  culture.  Not 
only  will  he  seem  lacking  in  the  humane  tradition, 
as  indeed  he  will  be  lacking  in  it,  but  he  will  seem 
perhaps  contemptuous  of  it  to  a  degree  which  shocks 
or  annoys  the  European.  Of  Americanism  in  this 
phase  Dickens  gave  a  portrait — of  the  apparently 


44  DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS 

boastful,  exaggerating,  shallow  Americanism.  Per 
haps  Dickens  failed  to  understand  the  great  effort 
by  which  citizens  of  the  United  States  resolve  not 
to  think  tenderly  of  the  things  they  or  their  fathers 
have  put  behind  them.  Americans  of  British  descent 
have  loved  Dickens  for  his  portrait  of  the  English 
life  from  which  they  have  gone  out;  yet  even  such 
Americans  will  rarely  permit  themselves  to  speak 
of  Englishmen  as  their  British  cousins  and  never 
of  England  as  their  home.  So  the  Italians  in  the 
States,  or  the  immigrants  of  any  other  nationality, 
are  careful  not  to  speak  of  their  Italian  sky  or  of 
the  other  particular  heaven  of  their  boyhood  as 
though  they  still  had  a  place  under  it ;  such  memories 
they  cut  off  as  completely  as  may  be  in  order  to 
share  without  reserve  in  the  enterprise  of  the  new 
world.  Of  course,  since  we  elect  to  live  in  the  future, 
we  give  the  impression  of  a  tendency  to  boast,  but 
when  we  speak  of  the  future  we  are  discoursing  upon 
the  only  part  of  our  history  which  we  all  have  in 
common.  We  are  merely  expressing  with  energy 
the  dreams  and  the  hopes  which  are  the  fabric  of 
our  present  moment,  and  at  times  we  are  merely 
whistling  for  courage  to  walk  on  with  so  little  guid 
ance  from  the  customs  and  habits  of  our  fathers. 
It  took  courage  to  pull  up  by  the  roots  a  family  in 
Denmark  or  in  Italy  or  in  Serbia,  let  us  say,  and 
to  transplant  it  to  a  new  world.  Such  a  family  set 
tling  in  central  Massachusetts,  for  example,  must 
repeat  several  times  the  equivalent  of  the  first  up 
rooting;  since  even  though  the  family  itself  does 
not  move,  its  neighbors  will,  and  the  Irish  settler 
will  be  succeeded  by  the  Polish  until  each  original 
family  is  once  more  isolated  among  people  of  other 


AMERICAN  CHARACTER  45 

backgrounds.  Or  if  the  family  simply  remains,  the 
new  generation  will  surround  it  with  new  traits. 
Many  a  novel  is  written  on  this  theme  in  the  United 
States  to-day — stories  of  the  Americanization  of 
this  family  or  that,  where  the  Americanization  con 
sists  largely  of  breaking  away  from  the  elder  gen 
eration  and  becoming  proportionately  optimistic. 
The  change  is  usually  effected  by  education;  it  is 
no  wonder  that  the  small  schoolhouse  is  so  often  a 
shrine  of  gratitude — often  a  gratitude  mingled  with 
melancholy,  for  here  the  culture  of  the  past  has  been 
used,  not  to  recover  the  past,  but  to  get  free  of  it. 
To  the  foreigner,  no  matter  how  friendly,  our  harp 
ing  upon  a  brilliant  future  is  perhaps,  as  we  said, 
a  form  of  boastfulness,  but  to  the  American  it  seems 
rather  a  form  of  prayer,  a  telling  of  beads,  and 
we  can  hear  in  it,  as  in  American  music,  a  wistful 
note;  we  are  conscious  of  caring  too  much  about  the 
future  and  too  little  about  the  past;  we  should  like 
to  know  at  any  moment  whether  the  frail  structure 
of  our  dreams  is  settling  down  to  some  contact  with 
some  foundation,  and  whether  we  are  at  least  walk 
ing  on  our  own  feet  on  the  ground. 

Our  seeming  optimism  is  most  blatant  when  our 
culture  is  most  defective,  but  even  when  the  Amer 
ican  is  at  home  in  the  older  world  he  will  prize  it 
chiefly  for  its  usefulness  to  him  and  his  fellows,  for 
bringing  their  dreams  to  earth.  The  crowds  of 
Americans  who  toured  Europe  in  the  years  before 
the  war  had  little  antiquarian  or  historical  interest 
in  what  they  saw.  They  looked  upon  European 
architecture  only  as  seeing  what  they  might  use  at 
home ;  if  the  Coliseum  reappeard  in  the  Yale  bowl, 
and  the  Gothic  cathedrals  were  freshly  translated 


46  DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS 

into  the  Woolworth  building,  then  those  ancient 
monuments  justified  themselves.  The  old  world  be 
longed  to  them,  they  thought — Westminster  Abbey, 
for  illustration,  was  to  them  as  much  American  as 
English.  We  did  not  build  it ;  but  then,  neither  did 
you.  The  people  who  built  it  are  dead.  The  Abbey 
is  the  possession  of  those  who  revere  it.  The  same 
point  of  view  is  the  secret  of  Longfellow's  charm 
for  his  countrymen,  and  perhaps  for  other  readers 
as  well.  When  he  translated,  or  even  when  he  gave 
his  original  self,  he  was  conveying  home  for  the 
American  the  usable  parts  of  European  literature. 
Here  best  is  found  an  explanation  of  his  currency 
even  among  those  writers  abroad  who  recognized 
how  much  he  had  copied  from  their  national  poetry ; 
for,  accommodating  the  poems  to  the  American  peo 
ple,  he  had  substituted  in  them  for  the  enjoyment 
of  history  the  American  wistfulness,  and  this  sub 
stitution  gave  him  originality  with  the  European 
reader.  If  we  were  to  seek  another  example  of 
the  discrimination  the  American  temperament 
makes  even  when  it  can  appreciate  the  older  culture, 
we  might  point  to  the  contrast  between  our  present 
neglect  of  Greek  language  and  literature  and  our 
present  great  interest  in  Greek  dancing.  With  us 
Greek  language  and  literature  have  long  been  taught 
chiefly  if  not  entirely  as  vehicles  of  a  tradition.  Even 
if  we  learned  to  read  Greek,  we  saw  no  opportunity 
for  doing  anything  with  that  difficult  accomplish 
ment.  Greek  dancing,  however,  gave  us  an  oppor 
tunity  to  dance.  You  may  say  if  you  choose  that 
neither  Athenian  nor  Spartan  nor  Theban  ever 
danced  as  does  the  American  who  imitates  the 
Greeks ;  the  average  American,  however,  is  by  pref- 


AMERICAN  CHARACTER  4.7 

erence  without  archeological  conscience,  and  for 
him  the  choice  is  easy  between  the  way  he  likes  to 
dance  and  the  way  the  Greeks  may  be  thought  to 
have  liked  to  do  so. 

To  say  that  even  the  cultured  American  is  inter 
ested  in  culture  only  for  what  it  will  avail  him  to 
morrow,  that  he  does  not  permit  himself  the  re 
trospects  of  history ;  to  say  that  the  average  Amer 
ican  uproots  himself  from  the  place  of  his  birth 
and  of  his  boyhood,  that  he  crushes  down  all  race 
memories  and  boasts  only  of  his  future — to  say  this 
is,  of  course,  to  exaggerate.  In  certain  parts  of 
the  United  States,  in  Virginia  and  Massachusetts, 
for  example,  pride  of  race  and  pride  of  the  hearth 
does  from  time  to  time  become  eloquent  in  the  old 
families.  Even  those  of  us  who  were  not  born  in 
those  states  enjoy  and  encourage  such  eloquence,  as 
being  a  somewhat  quaint  exhibition  of  our  national 
imagination;  but  at  the  same  time  our  instinctive 
answer  to  this  tendency  is  to  make  fun  of  it.  Bos 
ton  is  indeed  a  city  of  culture,  but  since  Boston  is 
aware  of  the  fact,  its  culture  is  for  other  Amer 
icans  a  theme  of  good-natured  jest.  This  defense 
against  an  incipient  pride  of  locality  or  pride  of 
ancestry  is  not  new  with  us ;  we  have  always  made 
it.  Irving  wrote  his  "History  of  Dietrich  Knicker 
bocker  "  as  comment  upon  a  serious  history  of  the 
Butch  settlers  in  New  York.  Similarly  David  Ga 
mut  in  Cooper's  "Last  of  the  Mohicans, "  and  Icha- 
bod  Crane  in  Irving 's  "Legend  of  Sleepy  Hollow, " 
are  notable  caricatures  of  the  school  teacher  who 
already  was  becoming  a  boasted  type  in  New  Eng 
land.  What  we  might  think  of  heredity,  were  we  an 
older  society,  we  do  not  know;  at  present,  however, 


48  DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS 

we  are  inclined  to  judge  a  man  by  his  future — by 
the  record  his  son  is  likely  to  make  rather  than  by 
the  record  his  father  made.  This  is  quite  literally 
true;  in  small  villages  and  in  cities  alike  the  son 
of  a  distinguished  father  is  fatally  handicapped  if 
he  shows  any  disposition  to  remember  whose  son 
he  is,  whereas  the  creditable  performance  of  a  ris 
ing  young  man  leads  the  neighbors  to  observe  that 
he  must  have  been  well  brought  up.  We  might  add 
that  if  the  American  lacks  reverence  for  his  elders, 
he  is  extremely  attentive  to  children. 


Even  though  this  point  of  view  may  be  exagge 
rated,  it  explains  many  things  which  otherwise  the 
foreigner  must  misunderstand  in  the  American,  or 
must,  what  is  perhaps  worse,  entirely  overlook  in 
him.  It  explains,  for  example,  the  great  difference 
between  what  an  American  means  when  he  talks  of 
liberty  and  what  an  Englishman  or  a  Frenchman 
means  by  the  same  word.  The  European  who  de 
sires  liberty  takes  for  granted  at  the  same  time  a 
tradition  which  is  itself  a  check  upon  too  great  free 
dom  ;  in  matters  of  art  and  conduct  tradition  enters 
his  character  as  an  endowment  of  taste.  But  when 
the  American  speaks  of  liberty  he  has  no  idea  of 
any  check  placed  by  any  tradition  upon  his  desire 
to  do  as  he  pleases.  Liberty,  as  he  conceives  of  it, 
is  an  opportunity  to  experiment,  and  his  freedom 
will  in  the  end  be  limited  only  by  the  hard  lesson 
which  experience  may  enforce.  It  was  not  by  acci- 


AMERICAN  CHARACTER  49 

dent  that  the  philosophy  of  pragmatism  evolved  it 
self  in  the  United  States,  that  philosophy  which  rele 
gates  truth  itself  to  an  experiment,  and  in  which, 
for  all  its  cheerfulness,  taste  is  at  a  discount.  Per 
haps  it  is  something  of  a  reason  for  distrusting 
pragmatism  that  it  is  the  social  expression  of  a 
nation  which,  from  force  of  circumstances,  has  given 
up  having  a  past,  and  to  some  extent  has  ceased  to 
be  guided  by  taste. 

T  Perhaps  it  may  seem  too  severe  a  criticism  of  any 
people  to  charge  them  with  a  wholesale  lack  of  taste. 
Yet  taste  involves  always  a  sense  of  chronology, 
perhaps  also  a  sense  of  geography ;  and  these  senses 
are  the  result  of  a  certain  studious  respect  for  what 
men  have  done  before  us,  and  for  the  particular 
ends  to  which  by  experience  they  learned  to  adapt 
particular  needs.  As  yet  the  American  fails  some 
what  to  reap  this  profit  from  the  past.  The  tourist 
who  sees  some  effect  of  Moorish  architecture  and  on 
the  same  trip  to  Europe  feels  the  charm  of  an  Eng 
lish  cottage  is  not  unlikely,  provided  he  has  the 
means,  to  incorporate  his  memory  of  both  styles  of 
architecture  into  his  house  at  home.  Some  of  our 
most  exciting  achievements  in  architecture  have 
been  so  reached.  We  cannot  argue  with  the  per 
petrator  of  these  mixtures,  since  by  his  philosophy 
of  life  they  are  not  mixtures  after  all,  but  simply 
quotations  from  one  unique  source,  the  past.  Nor  can 
we  easily  teach  the  young  American  to  feel  a  nearer 
interest  in  Benjamin  Franklin,  let  us  say,  than  in 
Julius  Caesar;  in  either  case  he  is  overwhelmed  with 
the  misfortune  the  distinguished  character  suffers, 
in  being  dead.  To  all  Americans,  old  or  young,  the 
past  is  a  great  negation,  the  infinite  gulf  in  which 


50  DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS 

dead  things  are  swallowed  up,  and  in  eternity  all 
the  dead  of  all  the  ages  are  contemporaries.  There 
fore  if  the  builder  of  the  village  house  mixes  his 
Moorish  and  English  architecture,  he  justifies  him 
self  with  the  conviction  that  both  styles  were  brought 
from  Europe,  and  Europe  is  some  place  outside  of 
America  from  which  useful  things  can  from  time  to 
time  be  resurrected.  Similarly  it  is  easy  for  the 
schoolboy,  and  indeed  for  the  grown  man  in  the 
United  States,  to  refer  quite  indiscriminately  to 
George  Washington,  to  Homer,  to  David,  and  to 
Barnum  in  a  juxtaposition  which  makes  the  Europe 
an  gasp ;  for  these  men  are  alike  dead,  and  the  Amer 
ican  has  carefully  avoided  that  meticulous  acquaint 
ance  with  the  past  which  makes  one  sensitive  to 
chronology  or  to  category.  ^\ 

It  is  not  the  uneducated  American  of  whom  I  am 
now  speaking.  The  best  illustration  of  this  atti 
tude  toward  the  past  is  the  poet-philosopher  who 
perhaps  is  the  most  American  of  all  our  writers, 
E.  W.  Emerson.  The  English  reviewers  who  found 
themselves  somewhat  bewildered  by  his  indifference 
to  chronology  disposed  of  his  early  books  with  polite 
amazement  or  with  contempt,  according  to  their 
individual  way  of  dealing  with  incomprehensible 
things.  "Life  has  no  memory,"  they  read  in  the 
great  essay  on  "Experience,"  and  in  the  first  lovely 
book  on  "Nature"  they  were  told  that  time  is  illu 
sion,  and  in  almost  every  page  of  Emerson  they 
were  taught  that  time  is  only  a  method  of  thought 
and.  that  man  is  great  as  he  emancipates  himself 
from  respect  for  other  lands  or  other  ages  than 
his  own.  In  almost  every  page  they  came  upon  lists 
of  books  or  names  of  cities  which  seemed  purposely 


AMERICAN  CHARACTER  51 

disordered  for  an  effect  of  humor ;  the  inventories 
for  which  Walt  Whitman  has  been  assailed  are  only 
a  moderate  exaggeration  of  Emerson's.  That  Briton 
of  common-sense  and  not  too  great  imagination, 
Thomas  Hughes,  was  moved  to  register  his  convic 
tion  that  Emerson  was  a  glittering  impostor — much 
as  a  modern  reader  might  accuse  a  clever  man  in  our 
own  day  of  catching  the  public  ear  with  silly  ec 
centricities.  But  Emerson  was  singularly  sincere 
and  as  far  as  possible  from  desiring  to  get  attention 
by  a  trick.  He  was,  however,  American,  and  if  we 
are  to  decide  that  indifference  to  the  past  is  a  weak 
ness  in  the  American  character,  then  Emerson  culti 
vated  that  weakness  with  all  his  heart.  When  he 
substituted  his  conception  of  an  oversoul  for  the 
orthodox  conception  of  God,  he  wished  to  do  more 
than  change  the  name  of  his  deity.  He  wished  to 
conceive  of  the  soul  as  breathed  through  by  an  eter 
nal  force,  equally  wise,  equally  loving  in  all  ages. 
Provided  this  oversoul  inspire  us,  there  is  no  need 
for  study  or  for  previous  experience.  "The  soul 
circumscribes  all  things, "  he  said,  "it  predicts  all 
experience,  in  like  manner  it  subtends  time  and 
space."  When  we  are  inspired,  we  are  great  men; 
without  that  inspiration  we  are  dead,  though  we 
know  history  ever  so  thoroughly.  In  other  words, 
Emerson  was  conceiving  of  a  God  who  should  be  a 
substitute  for  the  past,  and  who  would  make  a  knowl 
edge  of  the  past  unnecessary.  Such  a  God  the  He 
brew  Jehovah  was  not.  We  must  not  seem  to  give 
the  impression  that  the  Americans  of  to-day  who 
have  the  same  point  of  view  are  necessarily  follow 
ers  of  Emerson;  many  of  them  of  course  neglect  to 
read  him.  But  he  is  the  true  expression  of  his  coun- 


52  DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS 

try's  temperament,  and  is  likely  to  remain  so  for 
many  a  year. 

At  Emerson's  old  home,  Concord,  a  friend  of 
mine  recently  found,  in  an  American  audience  gath 
ered  to  hear  him  lecture,  a  curious  confirmation  of 
the  American  detachment  from  the  past.  The  idea 
of  lecturing  at  Concord  at  the  home  of  the  philos 
opher,  of  Hawthorne  and  of  Thoreau,  almost  on 
the  site  of  the  little  battle-field  which  had  for  the 
United  States  such  momentous  consequences,  in 
spired  my  friend  to  some  such  feeling  of  the  past 
as  a  European  would  understand.  When  he  faced 
his  audience,  however,  he  realized  that  most  of  them 
must  have  come  to  the  United  States  since  the  Civil 
War,  and  that  their  interest  in  the  old  revolutionary 
skirmish  and  in  the  writers  who  once  lived  in  the 
village  was  just  about  as  immediate  as  their  interest 
in  Marathon  or  in  the  home  of  the  obelisk-makers. 
My  friend,  telling  me  the  story,  said  like  a  good 
American,  "  After  all,  they  are  quite  right.  Why 
live  in  the  past?"  I  do  not  know  whether  he  real 
ized  how  near  he  was  to  quoting  Emerson  himself — 
"Our  age  is  retrospective.  It  builds  the  sepulchers 
of  the  fathers.  It  writes  biographies,  histories,  and 
criticism.  The  foregoing  generations  beheld  God 
and  Nature  face  to  face;  we,  through  their  eyes. 
Why  should  not  we  also  enjoy  an  original  relation 
to  the  universe?  .  .  .  Why  should  we  grope  among 
the  dry  bones  of  the  past,  or  put  the  living  genera 
tion  into  masquerade  out  of  its  faded  wardrobe? 
The  sun  shines  to-day  also.  There  is  more  wool  and 
flax  in  the  fields.  There  are  new  lands,  new  men, 
new  thoughts.  Let  us  demand  our  own  works  and 
laws  and  worship."  The  American  boys  called  to 


AMERICAN  CHARACTER  53 

France  in  our  armies  -were  few  of  them  studious 
readers  of  Emerson,  but  most  of  them  were  of  his 
school  of  thought.  It  was  only  for  the  sake  of  the 
future,  after  all,  that  they  willingly  engaged  so 
deeply  in  what  seemed  to  them  the  tragic  result  of 
a  long  past.  Finding  themselves  hailed  by  friendly 
English  comrades  as  cousins  in  blood,  they  learned 
as  quickly  as  possible  to  conceal  their  astonishment; 
to  many  of  them  the  remark  was  merely  a  compul 
sion  to  think  for  the  first  time  of  the  stock  from 
which  they  came — usually  not  an  Anglo-Saxon 
stock.  Arriving  in  France,  they  found  themselves 
greeted  with  an  extraordinary  gratitude  which  im 
plied  something  done  in  the  past  of  which  they  were 
not  aware.  Upon  inquiry  they  found  that  they  were 
received  as  America's  gift  in  return  for  Lafayette. 
Many  of  them,  with  the  best  disposition  to  be  au 
courant,  asked  at  once,  Who  was  Lafayette?  Some 
of  them  must  have  been  disappointed  to  know  that 
he  died  so  long  ago.  All  of  then}  were  really  more 
interested  in  Marshal  Foch. 

The  American  philosophy  which  I  have  been  here 
setting  forth  may  explain  also  the  American  atti 
tude  toward  the  Germans,  which  in  some  respects 
differs  slightly  from  the  French  or  the  British  atti 
tude.  Even  if  Germany  had  not  forced  the  United 
States  to  fight,  the  demonstration  which  Germans 
gave  us  in  the  United  States  that  they  had  not  af 
ter  all  abandoned  their  own  past,  would  have 
been  a  matter  of  concern  for  all  Americans  con 
scious  of  their  own  philosophy.  We  had  looked  upon 
the  Germans,  cherishing  in  our  midst  their  love  of 
old  customs,  much  as  we  looked  upon  the  Scotch  in 
various  communities,  as  eminently  loyal  citizens  of 


54  DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS 

the  new  world,  who  yet  affectionately  retained  an 
antiquarian  interest  in  the  country  of  their  origin. 
We  found  a  certain  quaintness  in  their  memory  of 
the  old  country,  simply  because  the  American  so 
rarely  exhibits  any  memory  at  all  of  the  past;  we 
did  not  suspect  that  tradition  among  the  Germans 
was  a  thing  more  real  than  among  those  Massachu 
setts  or  Virginia  families  of  which  I  have  spoken, 
where  a  good-humored  fashion  makes  something  of 
the  ancestors  of  the  house.  The  early  years  of  the 
war  showed  us,  however,  that  the  Germans  had  never 
given  up  their  past,  that  they  therefore  had  never 
become  one  with  the  other  Americans,  and  that  they 
had  no  share  in  our  future.  If  the  other  racial  ele 
ments  which  have  come  to  our  shores  should  disclose 
a  similar  tendency  in  moments  of  stress,  our  great 
experiment  in  the  new  world  would  be  obviously  a 
failure.  We  feel  that  the  war  has  proved,  for  all 
other  racial  elements  except  the  Germans,  that  the 
experiment  is  not  a  failure;  as  for  the  Germans, 
it  has  proved,  we  think,  that  some  of  them  can 
have  no  part  with  us,  and  that  those  of  them  who 
are  American  at  heart  must  drop  their  past  alto 
gether. 


,  in 

Any  study  of  American  character  to-day  which 
would  arrive  at  the  truth  must,  I  think,  face  frankly, 
as  I  here  have  tried  to  do,  the*  extent  to  which  the 
citizen  of  the  United  States,  at  least  in  the  present 
generation,  lives  without  a  sense  of  the  past.  What 
America  may  become  is  perhaps  suggested  by  the 


AMERICAN  CHARACTER  55 

consciousness  which  most  thoughtful  Americans  be 
gin  to  have  of  the  shortcomings  in  the  national 
character — the  shortcomings  which  result  from  this 
exclusive  emphasis  upon  the  future.  More  than  any 
other  nation  that  has  played  an  important  role  in 
the  world,  we  are  without  a  sense  of  the  soil;  we 
quite  literally  live  in  a  world  of  ideas,  we  quite  liter 
ally  get  along  somehow  without  a  practical  reckon 
ing  of  time  and  space.  We  have  developed  a  top- 
heavy  way  of  life.  When  we  speak  of  the  home, 
since  we  have  no  sense  of  the  local  hearth  as  a 
Frenchman  has,  nor  of  the  place  from  which  our 
ancestors  came  as  the  British  colonist  has,  we  are 
forced  to  think  of  the  world  of  ideas  which  are  in 
cluded  in  a  household.  •  The  people  for  whom  we 
have  the  household  affection  make  up  all  that  we 
know  of  home.  To  take  this  attitude  toward  life 
may  be  indeed  to  take  an  ideal  attitude,  but  we  be 
gin  to  have  among  us  here  and  there  certain  lonely 
philosophers,  Professor  George  Santayana  for  ex 
ample,  who  remind  us  that  ideals  must  have  roots 
in  natural  facts,  and  that  to  live  merely  in  sentiments 
and  affections  is  to  follow  a  thin  and  perhaps  a  dan 
gerous  kind  of  existence.  We  wonder  from  time  to 
time  how  long  it  will  be  before  the  readjustment 
which  at  present  seems  continuously  needed  in  the 
United  States  will  bring  us  to  some  point  of  stabil 
ity,  where  our  affections  may  begin  to  attach  them 
selves  to  quite  earthly  and  natural  shrines. 

If  the  United  States  were  really  a  melting-pot,  we 
should  expect  our  people,  coming  as  they  do  from 
all  races,  to  represent  as  it  were  the  sum  total  of 
what  all  races  might  contribute  to  the  common  wealth 
of  humanity.  We  might  expect,  therefore,  to  find 


56  DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS 

in  the  United  States  much,  art,  fine  science,  and  a 
noble  poetry.  That  has  indeed  been  the  expectation 
of  optimistic  Americans,  and  the  expectation  has 
furnished  the  text  for  much  comment  from  critical 
foreigners,  who  upon  visiting  our  shores  have  mar 
veled,  perhaps  with  an  inward  satisfaction  after 
all,  that  a  country  so  new  and  supposedly  full  of 
energy  should  have  as  yet  disclosed  so  meager  an 
utterance  in  things  of  the  spirit.  The  fact  is,  how 
ever,  that  a  nation  which  has  dropped  its  past  has 
thereby  dropped  the  instruments  of  expression. 
Language  is  but  a  series  of  sounds,  mere  groans  and 
noises  if  you  choose,  until  the  ear  has  grown  accus 
tomed  after  many  centuries  to  detect  the  significant 
shades  and  intonations  of  the  specific  groan.  No 
language  can  be  improvised,  if  the  audience  is  to 
understand  the  speaker.  The  larger  fabric  of  lan 
guage,  the  racial  memories  to  which  an  old  country 
can  always  appeal,  obviously  do  not  exist  in  a  land 
where  every  man  is  busy  forgetting  his  past,  separ 
ating  himself  from  the  memory  of  what  his  fore 
fathers  felt  and  said.  Without  tradition  there  can 
be  no  taste,  and  what  is  worse,  there  can  be  little 
for  taste  to  act  upon.  We  have  indeed  some  ap 
proaches,  some  faint  hints  and  suggestions  of  a  na 
tional  poetry.  The  cartoon  figure  of  Uncle  Sam, 
for  example,  a  great  poet  could  perhaps  push  over 
into  the  world  of  art,  but  unless  the  poet  soon  ar 
rives  there  will  be  few  Americans  left  who  can  rec 
ognize  in  that  gaunt  figure  the  first  Yankee,  the 
keen,  witty,  audacious,  and  slightly  melancholy  type 
of  our  countrymen  as  they  first  emerged  in  world 
history. 

From  among  all  our  great  men  for  the  last  two 


AMERICAN  CHARACTER  57 

hundred  years,  of  whom  can  we  write  a  story 
or  a  poem  with  any  expectation  that  the  reader 
has  heard  of  the  man  before — or,  to  be  more  gener 
ous  toward  the  reader,  with  any  expectation  that, 
having  heard  of  the  man,  he  knows  anything  in  par 
ticular  about  him?  Benjamin  Franklin,  Thomas 
Jefferson,  Daniel  Boone,  are  names  indeed  but  little 
more,  to  the  American  whose  father  reached  the 
United  States  since  1864.  George  Washington  is 
connected  in  some  dim  way  with  the  story  of  a 
cherry  tree,  but  his  hatchet  activity  begins  to  be 
mixed  up  in  the  national  memory  with  the  fact  that 
Lincoln  is  said  to  have  split  rails.  Lincoln  himself 
is  the  only  national  figure  who  seems  eligible  for 
literary  uses,  but  it  sometimes  seems  that  for  many 
of  us  he  is  only  the  representative  in  later  costume 
of  the  cartoon  figure  of  Uncle  Sam.  The  attempts 
which  poets  have  made  and  are  making  in  the  United 
States  to  begin  a  national  literature  are  among  the 
most  interesting  and  pathetic  in  the  history  of  art 
— pathetic  because  few  of  them  remember  what  must 
precede  art,  a  good  store  of  legend  or  history  which 
the  poet  can  draw  upon  and  turn  to  emotional  value. 
To  speak  of  Trafalgar  or  of  Blenheim  to  an  Eng 
lishman  is  to  stir  an  emotion  already  prepared",  but 
in  America  to  speak  of  the  "Merrimac"  and  the 
"Monitor,"  or  of  Vicksburg  or  of  Valley  Forge  is 
simply  to  stir  memories  of  the  schoolroom  in  which 
the  children  of  the  newcomer  tried  to  remember 
many  facts  of  like  importance  and  alike  removed 
from  his  interest,  since  they  all  were  imbedded  in 
a  past,  whether  of  Egypt  or  of  England  or  of  his 
own  country.  We  have  thought  that  the  present 
war  might  indeed  mark  the  beginning  of  such  na- 


58  DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS 

tional  memories  as  would  make  for  us  a  national 
art. 

Yet  that  hope  may  be  frustrated ;  for  we  dreamed 
of  such  a  beginning  after  the  Civil  War,  and 
for  a  while  Northerner  and  Southerner  could 
understand  any  reference  to  Stonewall  Jackson  or 
Eobert  Lee,  and  in  New  England  even  at  the  end 
of  the  nineteenth  century  most  citizens  could  ap 
preciate  the  wonderful  monument  which  St.  Gau- 
dens  made  of  Robert  Gould  Shaw.  To-day,  how 
ever,  so  many  Bostonians  happen  to  have  been  born 
in  Italy  that  the  figure  of  the  young  officer  riding 
with  his  negro  regiment  is  likely  to  suggest  almost 
anything  except  a  common  tradition.  So  far  as 
art  is  concerned,  our  task  in  America  is  to  make 
the  country  a  true  melting-pot,  to  turn  into  a  com 
mon  heritage  something  of  what  each  race  brings 
to  us  of  race  memory  and  of  race  aptitude  for  beau 
tiful  things.  We  are  disturbed  to  observe  that  the 
Italian  who  arrives  among  us  with  a  fresh  and  ap 
parently  inexhaustible  passion  for  color  and  design 
becomes  in  the  second  generation  a  mere  American, 
as  poor  in  language  as  the  rest  of  us ;  that  in  time 
the  music-loving  Russian  forgets  his  gift,  and  that 
our  own  native  Indian  dies  rapidly,  leaving  in  our 
culture  no  trace  of  his  extraordinary  sense  of  rhythm 
and  color  and  design.  All  of  us,  in  conceding  some 
thing  for  the  sake  of  a  common  understanding,  have 
conceded  so  much  that  we  have  little  left  in  com 
mon  to  understand. 

If  our  lack  of  a  past  handicaps  us  in  the  matter 
of  art,  it  handicaps  us  also  in  manners,  since  man 
ners  are  themselves  an  art.  Those  societies  which 
have  a  traditional  behavior  have  manners;  other 


AMERICAN  CHARACTER  59 

societies  must  improvise  their  behavior  as  they  go 
along.  If  the  American  seems  impromptu  in  'his 
ways,  it  is  really  remarkable  that  he  does  not  seem 
even  more  so,  since  outside  of  the  individual  home 
or  the  particular  part  of  the  given  city  in  which  he 
may  reside  he  is  subject  to  no  formulas  of  behavior, 
and  if  he  has  manners  he  is  likely  to  suggest  to  his 
countrymen  that  he  is  imitating  the  foreigner.  You 
may  talk  or  walk  or  may  conduct  a  drawing-room 
conversation  in  an  English  way,  in  a  French  way, 
in  an  Italian  way,  or  in  a  German  way ;  but  it  would 
be  a  bold  critic  who,  after  knowing  America,  would 
say  just  what  is  the  American  way  of  doing  these 
things,  since  Americans  on  the  whole  do  those  and 
other  things  each  as  he  pleases.  There  may  seem 
at  first  sight  little  reason  to  object  to  a  spontaneity 
of  manner  which  has  managed  to  slough  off  much 
impedimenta  and  to  have  brought  to  the  fore  in 
stinctive  friendliness  and  unveiled  sincerity.  But 
there  are  other  uses  of  behavior  than  merely  to 
seem  amia'ble ;  manners  become  at  times  vitally  sig 
nificant  as  language,  and  it  is  difficult  indeed  to 
speak  with  manners  as  with  any  other  form  of  dis 
course  unless  the  hearer  is  conversant  with  the  par 
ticular  tongue.  In  manners  then,  as  in  art,  the  oc 
casional  American  who  cares  thoughtfully  for  his 
country's  future,  is  at  this  moment  considering  by 
what  means  we  may  conserve  the  total  contribution 
of  all  the  races  that  come  to  us  in  one  blended 
language  which  all  of  us  may  speak  and  under 
stand. 

Aside  from  the  field  of  art,  one  might  expect  that 
a  country  which  starts  fresh,  which  stands  on  its 
own  feet,  which  considers  every  man  equal  to  every 


60  DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS 

other  provided  lie  is  honest  and  sincere  and  loyal 
to  his  neighbor,  which  reminds  itself  frequently  that 
the  world  began  when  each  one  of  us  was  -born — it 
might  be  expected  that  such  a  country  wo*ld  achieve 
something  clear  and  original  in  philosophy.  Are  not 
the  old  countries  too  much  encumbered  with  prob 
lems  raised  by  the  fume  of  dialectic  controversy? 
Would  not  a  group  of  men  beginning  with  the  ma 
turity  of  manhood  and  yet  with  the  unembarrassed 
vision  of  children,  see  life  at  least  somewhat  as  it 
is?  This  has  indeed  been  our  American  hope,  and 
our  most  characteristic  philosopher  has  held  it 
out  to  us  as  an  ideal,  lending  much  transcendental 
color  to  the  argument.  Professor  Santayana,  in  our 
own  day,  the  most  subtle  of  our  philosophers,  has 
preached  it  with  infinite  charm  and  persuasion.  Yet 
a  critic  of  life  so  astute  as  Professor  Santayana  ob 
serves  that  the  citizen  of  the  United  States  is  rather 
far  from  seeing  life  as  it  is;  in  fact,  he  is  so  busy 
making  himself  agreeable  to  his  neighbors  by  dis 
carding  traditional  prejudices,  and  incidentally  per 
haps,  traditional  inspirations,  that  his  last  state  is 
not  one  of  clear  vision  but  of  a  vague,  diffused  feel 
ing.  He  is  not  preeminently  an  admirer  of  intelli 
gence.  He  is  in  love  with  morality,  which  he  inter 
prets  as  a  high  state  of  feeling  rather  than  as  a 
considered  course  of  conduct.  There  is  here  a  dif 
ference  between  the  moral  sense  of  England  and 
that  of  the  United  States;  in  England,  if  one  may 
judge  by  the  record  of  a  long  line  of  poets  and  prose 
writers,  it  is  less  in  a  man's  favor  that  he  should  be 
intelligent  than  that  he  should  be  good,  but  in  the 
United  States  it  seems  less  in  a  man's  favor  that  he 
should  act  well  than  that  he  should  feel  strongly 


AMERICAN  CHARACTER  61 

about  good  conduct  or  that  others  should  feel 
strongly  about  his  conduct.  We  reduce  as  many 
of  our  problems  as  possible  to  this  kind  of  moral 
question.  Our  political  contests  frequently  resolve 
into  a  debate  as  to  whether  the  candidate  is  or  is 
not  a  good  man,  and  the  party  which  rises  to  the 
highest  temperature  of  emotion  wins — all  this  with 
out  much  regard  for  the  particular  problem  which 
the  good  man  who  is  felt  to  be  good  by  a  majority 
of  his  countrymen  will  thereafter  be  called  upon  to 
solve.  Perhaps  this  extraordinary  expression  of 
feeling  in  matters  of  moral  concern  is  an  exhibition 
of  racial  sentiment  otherwise  repressed.  Is  the  idea 
too  fantastic?  Man's  heart  must  rest  on  something 
solid,  and  the  Decalogue  will  serve  as  a  floating 
island  in  the  world  of  ideas  until  we  come  to  a 
broader  and  more  firmly  anchored  territory. 

The  tendency  to  set  character  above  everything 
else,  this  sentimentality  if  I  may  call  it  so  frankly, 
is  not  peculiar  to  any  one  race-strain  in  the  total 
American  complex ;  it  characterizes  all  of  us.  Walt 
Whitman  was  truly  American  in  his  expression  of 
diffuse  and  indiscriminate  amiability.  William 
James  is  truly  American  in  putting  an  optimistic 
mood  at  the  service  of  all  his  countrymen — an  amia 
ble  project  for  a  modern  philosopher  to  devote  him 
self  to.  It  was  a  typical  American  who  recently 
wrote  to  a  serious  journal  in  the  United  States  com 
plaining  of  the  education  given  in  our  colleges  that 
it  was  too  exclusively  devoted  to  the  training  of 
the  mind.  Among  all  the  faults  attributable  to  our 
educational  system,  this  special  charge,  that  we 
trained  the  mind,  we  surely  did  not  expect  to  h€ar. 
The  danger  of  too  great  amiability  is  not  merely 


62  DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS 

that  in  the  world  of  intelligence  it  makes  us  blind 
to  fliose  problems  which  can  be  solved  only  by  in 
telligence,  problems  of  pure  mechanics  or  of  pure 
physics  or  of  economics,  but  that  even  in  the  world 
of  emotion  it  ends  at  last  by  depriving  us  of  stand 
ards,  so  that  once  we  feel  kindly  toward  the  conduct 
and  ideas  of  other  men,  we  shortly  are  well-disposed 
to  their  feelings  also.  If  it  took  a  long  time  for  the 
United  States  to  orient  itself  in  this  world  war, 
the  cause  should  perhaps  be  sought  not  only  in  our 
detachment  from  European  affairs  but  more  pro 
foundly  in  our  lack  of  common  standards  by  which 
to  judge  conduct  of  any  sort.  The  service  of  the 
war  to  us  may  prove  in  the  end  to  be  chiefly  this, 
that  we  have  limited  decidedly  the  area  of  experi 
ence  in  which  we  are  willing  to  measure  things  solely 
by  an  amiable  disposition. 

A  foreigner  expects  of  the  American  not  only  a 
new  art  and  a  new  intelligence,  but  also  great 
energy,  great  genius  for  machinery,  and  a  faculty 
for  organization.  Even  if  he  fails  to  discover  the 
art  and  the  intelligence,  he  usually  decides  that  the 
American  indeed  has  the  mechanical  or  the  organ 
izing  gift.  The  American,  himself,  however,  is  rather 
surprised  at  this  verdict.  Why  should  he  be 
praised  for  his  machines?  The  fact  is  that  he  sets 
little  store  by  them,  and  merely  wonders  in  his  turn 
why  the  foreigner  does  not  avail  himself  of  the  same 
simple  aids  toward  comfort.  Much  as  the  American 
has  been  accused  of  loving  luxury,  he  really  does  not 
value  merely  comfortable  or  useful  things,  but  in  a 
world  where  it  is  easy  to  have  comfort  he  wonders 
what  great  virtue  there  would  be  in  going  with 
out  it. 


AMERICAN  CHARACTER  63 

Grave  danger  there  is  in  machinery,  a§  thei 
American  is  aware;  he  knows  that  society  has  not 
yet  found  the  right  adjustment  of  machinery  to 
human  comfort  and  leisure ;  he  knows  that  we  may 
become  slaves  in  some  degree  to  the  instruments 
we  created  for  our  convenience;  but  he  also  knows 
that  this  peril  is  not  peculiarly  American.  The  dif 
ference  between  him  and  the  European,  as  he  sees 
it,  is  that  the  European  fears  to  use  any  machinery, 
and  he  does  not.  He  fears  no  loss  in  human  dignity 
if  he  substitutes  a  mechanical  street-sweeper  for  a 
row  of  laboring  men.  It  seems  to  him  that  if  the 
machine  can  clear  away  the  mud,  then  sweeping  the 
streets  is  no  fit  work  for  a  man.  He  cannot  see  that 
the  invention  and  the  use  of  machines  is  any  great 
credit  to  him  nor  any  sign,  as  the  foreigner  so  often 
interprets  it  to  be,  that  his  heart  is  set  on  material 
things.  He  cares  little  for  money,  though  he  hap 
pens  to  live  in  a  fortunate  land  where  money  is 
comparatively  easy  to  win.  It  is  on  this  subject  that 
he  is  most  sensitive  so  far  as  Europe  is  concerned, 
since  the  foreigner  who  gives  him  lectures  on  his 
too  feverish  pursuit  of  gold  has  in  many  cases  come 
to  America  to  make  money  by  the  lecture.  At  least 
by  his  own  account  the  foreigner  does  not  come  out 
of  admiration  of  American  art  or  of  American 
science. 

The  American  wonders  also  why  Europe  doea 
not  recognize  his  extraordinary  preoccupation: 
with  ideas.  His  wars  have  been  fought  for  ideas, 
his  universities  are  debating  grounds  of  new  ideaSj 
he  rebuilds  his  cities  at  great  inconvenience  in  or 
der  to  carry  out  his  latest  idea,  and  he  will  exchange* 
all  the  gold  he  has  for  any  idea  which  almost  any 


64  DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS 

European  brings  him.  The  latest  success  in  French 
philosophy  or  British  thought,  the  newly  risen  artist 
on  the  European  stage,  is  likely  to  find  his  first  and 
largest  audience  in  the  United  States,  and  the  puz 
zled  American  when  he  reads  an  English  criticism 
of  the  low  state  of  our  intellectual  life,  frequently 
wonders  whether  British  idealism  has  reached  such 
perfection  that  it  would  not  notice  the  difference 
if  all  the  American  purchasers  of  British  books  and 
patrons  of  ^British  art  were  to  withdraw  their  sup 
port.  He  is  puzzled  at  the  greeting  accorded  by  the 
foreign  press  when  he  invests  all  the  money  he  has 
in  some  ancient  and  priceless  work  of  art.  What 
better  use  could  he  put  money  to  than  to  buy  with 
it  the  lovely  tapestry,  the  Eubens,  or  the  DaVinci 
which  he  admires?  To  his  great  surprise  he  is  ac 
cused  of  robbing  British  art  if  he  buys  a  Eubens,  or 
British  literature  if  he  is  willing  to  pay  more  thanl 
anyone  else  for  a  manuscript  of  Burns.  He  would  be 
accused  of  robbing  French  art  if  he  managed  to 
purchase  the  Venus  de  Milo.  The  two  questions  that 
perplex  him  are,  first,  why  a  portrait  of  Eubens 
or  of  Eembrandt  should  be  more  British  than  Amer 
ican  art,  and  second,  why  he  should  be  thought  to 
have  done  something  ignoble  if  he  pays  more  for 
the  manuscript  of  a  British  poet  than  any  British 
citizen  is  willing  to  pay!  What  Americans  really 
think  about  art,  to  what  their  hearts  are  really  given 
in  this  world  as  between  material  accomplishment 
and  the  things  of  the  spirit,  cannot  yet  be  judged 
by  their  own  product  in  art  or  in  literature  or  even 
in  science,  for  our  nation  by  forgetting  its  past  has 
temporarily  sacrificed  the  ability  to  accomplish 
great  things  in  the  world  of  expression.  But  if  we 


AMERICAN  CHARACTER  65 

have  thrown  overboard  our  past,  it  has  been  in  order 
to  make  the  greatest  of  all  experiments  in  human 
brotherhood.  Where  we  do  set  our  scale  of  values 
and  where  we  shall  set  them  when  we  once  have  a 
common  background  out  of  which  to  make  a  great 
art  of  our  own,  has  been  witnessed  for  a  long  time 
in  the  shrines  to  European  poets  which  American 
subscriptions  have  helped  to  set  up,  in  the  monu 
ments  to  great  artists,  and  in  the  pilgrimages  to 
those  shrines  which  not  only  rich  Americans  have 
yearly  made,  but  all  of  us  who  could  by  any  sacri 
fice  find  the  means  to  travel. 


rv 

In  such  times  as  these  when  wise  men  scrutinize 
with  rigor  even  the  things  they  love  best,  it  would 
not  be  profitable  for  an  American,  writing  either 
for  his  countrymen  or  for  the  foreign  reader,  to 
praise  his  own  country  much.  Yet  I  suppose  the 
last  mystery  in  the  American  character  which  should 
be  exposed  to  the  foreigner  is  the  reason  why  Amer 
icans,  having  so  little  tradition,  do  after  all  love 
their  country.  What  began  with  us  as  a  necessity 
has  become  a  conviction  and  a  hope — our  faith  that 
it  is  possible  for  man  to  begin  again  and  to  win  an 
unprejudiced  future.  We  believe  that  the  men  who 
arrive  by  the  thousands  from  older  shores  to  be  our 
comrades  may,  in  changing  from  the  discipline  of 
Europe  to  the  freedom  of  our  land,  succeed  in  a 
new  statement  of  human  perfection.  This  has  long 
been  our  hope;  it  was  expressed  for  us  in  many  a 


66  DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS 

great  sentence  of  Lincoln's,  in  many  a  stirring  line 
of  Whitman's,  and  in  many  a  paragraph  of  Emer 
son's.  "Every  spirit  builds  itself  a  house;  and  be 
yond  its  house  a  world;  and  beyond  its  world  a 
heaven.  Know  then,  that  the  world  exists  for  you. 
For  you  is  the  phenomenon  perfect.  What  we  are, 
that  only  can  we  see.  All  that  Adam  had,  all  that 
Caesar  could,  you  have  and  can  do.  Adam  called 
his  house  heaven  and  earth;  Caesar  called  his  house 
Borne;  you  perhaps  call  yours  a  cobbler's  trade,  a 
hundred  acres  of  plowed  land,  or  a  scholar's  garret. 
Yet  line  for  line  and  point  for  point,  your  domain 
is  as  great  as  theirs,  though  without  fine  names. 
Build,  therefore,  your  own  world."  If  you  were 
to  stand  at  the  dock  and  read  such  words  as  these 
to  each  shipload  of  immigrants,  you  would  merely 
be  putting  into  language  the  hope  that  brings  them. 
If  you  were  to  read  these  words  to  their  children 
and  to  their  grandchildren,  you  would  still  be  ex 
pressing  what  they  have  come  to  love  in  the  United 
States,  and  what  they  believe  can  best  be  achieved 
there. 

Meanwhile  our  task  is  to  make  a  common  past  of 
our  own — not  so  much  of  the  past,  we  hope,  as  to 
shackle  us  again,  but  just  enough  of  the  past  to  talk 
with,  to  give  us  a  language  for  art,  for  poetry,  to 
give  us  a  proper  vehicle  for  our  emotions.  We 
would  relate  our  idealism  at  last  to  the  facts  beneath 
our  feet.  We  would  have  a  philosophy  which  begins 
in  a  clear  understanding  of  the  world  around  us, 
and  finds  in  that  world  intelligent  means  to  reach 
ideal  ends.  We  believe  that  by  education  the  vast 
majority  of  men  can  be  made  capable  of  this  devel 
opment.  Our  faith  has  been  immensely  strength- 


AMERICAN  CHARACTER  67 

ened  by  what  we  have  seen  in  our  Army  in  Europe, 
regiment  upon  regiment  of  all  races  and  all  lan 
guages,  yet  all  American  and  loyal.  Loyal  to  what? 
To  their  ideal  of  a  country  where  race  does  not 
count.  They  will  go  home,  we  believe,  with  discrimi 
nating  admiration  for  what  they  have  seen  of  the 
great  qualities  of  their  allies.  They  have  been  at 
school.  They  have  had  a  glimpse  of  that  interna 
tional  sphere  in  which  the  nations  will  some  day 
practice  unselfishness.  But  it  is  not  likely  that  they 
will  carry  back  much  love  for  the  past — only  indeed 
for  the  beautiful  things  out  of  the  past,  the  things 
of  art  which  we  have  always  loved  in  the  United 
States,  and  which  seem  to  belong  not  to  time  at  all. 


Ill 

FRENCH  IDEALS  AND  AMERICAN 


IN  France  we  have  caught  reflections  of  our  char 
acter  in  the  opinions  which  the  Frenchman  from 
time  to  time  lets  slip  in  his  familiar  talk.  Since 
these  opinions  show  the  speaker's  character  also, 
we  are  prompted  to  use  them  for  a  comparison  of 
the  two  nations,  of  their  accomplishments  and  of 
their  ideals.  The  average  American  who  would  un 
derstand  France  may  best  begin  with  a  comparison 
of  ideals,  for  he  will  find  it  hard  to  believe  that  by 
his  standards  the  French  have  accomplished  much, 
nor  from  his  point  of  view  are  they  an  active  or 
an  energetic  people,  nor  apparently  do  they  wish 
to  be.  He  will  admit  that  in  moments  of  extreme 
peril  they  have  improvised  a  kind  of  desperate  ef 
ficiency,  at  Valmy  in  1792,  at  the  Marne  in  1914,  but 
he  will  think  these  moments  exceptional.  If,  how 
ever,  the  American  begins  by  asking  what  France 
wishes  to  do,  what  is  her  object  in  life,  the  inquiry 
is  likely  to  disclose  some  weakness,  or  at  least  some 
doubtful  areas,  in  the  program  of  his  own  ideals. 
It  will  then  be  easier  for  him  perhaps  to  understand 
how  marvelous  is  the  accomplishment  of  France, 
measured  in  terms  of  the  French  spirit. 

68 


FRENCH  IDEALS  AND  AMERICAN          69 

In  material  achievement  France  and  the  United 
States  differ  greatly,  but  in  our  ideals  we  at  least 
have  the  appearance  of  agreement ;  certain  formulas 
of  our  hopes  and  of  our  faith  are  spread  like  plati 
tudes  over  the  daily  speech  of  both  nations.  If  you 
should  ask  an  American  audience,  for  example, 
whether  the  mind  is  more  than  the  body,  whether 
what  a  man  is  should  count  for  more  than  what  he 
has,  the  American  audience  would  say  yes — espe 
cially  on  Sunday.  Should  you  ask  a  French  audience 
the  same  question,  they  would  give  the  same  answer, 
but  they  would  wonder  why  you  asked;  they  would 
also  wonder  why  the  American  is  so  given  to  saying 
over  these  phrases  of  idealism,  yet  so  slow  to  act 
upon  them.  Long  ago  the  French  made  it  the  prin 
ciple  of  their  national  life  that  spiritual  things  should 
be  valued  above  material,  that  a  man's  riches  should 
be  looked  for  in  his  character.  We  live  by  no  such 
principle,  however  we  may  have  flattered  ourselves, 
and  in  France,  of  all  countries,  under  the  scrutiny 
of  friends  who  like  ourselves  are  taking  inventory 
of  national  ideals,  we  are  most  certain  to  learn  how 
widely  our  practice  varies  from  our  talk. 

Before  America  entered  the  war  the  French  gen 
eral  public  thought  of  us  as  a  nation  of  millionaires 
with  a  rather  commercial  interest  in  life.  After  we 
decided  to  take  the  side  of  the  Allies,  the  average 
Frenchman  continued  to  think  of  us  as  millionaires, 
but  he  realized  that  our  chief  interest  in  life  could 
not  be  mercenary  since  we  had  cast  our  lot  on  a 
costly  if  not  a  losing  side ;  in  fact,  he  began  to  see 
in  us,  as  he  generously  said,  idealists  fighting  for 
an  abstraction,  not  for  material  gain,  and  our  cross 
ing  of  the  Atlantic  he  spoke  of  as  a  crusade.  Eegi- 


70  DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS 

meiit  after  regiment  of  crusaders  arrived  on  French 
soil,  prayed  for,  waited  for,  and  beautifully  wel 
comed  with  curiosity  of  spirit  as  well  as  with  open 
arms ;  every  French  citizen  who  understood  English 
was  alert  for  the  first  precious  words  to  fall  from 
the  lips  of  the  new-found  idealists.  What  did  fall 
from  those  lips  has  become  almost  a  commonplace, 
it  fell  so  uniformly — "What  funny  little  locomo 
tives!"  "What  a  queer  sound  the  whistle  makes!" 
"How  odd,  they  have  110  plumbing!"  "Why  doesn't 
the  elevator  work?  "  These  were  our  instinctive  and 
nnconsidered  first  comments  upon  France.  Said  one 
astonished  native,  "If  you  really  speak  first  of  ma 
chinery,  if  that  is  your  involuntary  thought  and  your 
nearest  interest  in  life,  perhaps  you  are  fighting  on 
the  wrong  side ;  in  machinery  it  is  the  Germans  who 
excel. ' ' 

Of  course  we  answer  that  Americans  are  not 
interested  chiefly  in  machines,  that  we  have  eyes 
for  beauty,  for  the  French  landscape,  for  the  memo 
rials  of  time  and  for  the  modern  art  that  every 
where  enrich  French  civilization,  that  we  have  quick 
sympathy  for  the  heroism  which  ennobled  France  in 
the  great  war;  but  the  fact  remains  that  we  do  not 
as  a  rule  speak  of  these  things,  that  in  practice  our 
idealism  does  not  find  spontaneous  expression.  Is 
it  only  that  we  are  as  yet  a  people  of  limited  speech, 
still  without  a  medium  for  the  generous  emotions 
we  believe  are  ours  !  In  that  case,  how  odd  that  we 
should  be  in  France,  where  the  human  spirit  for 
Centuries  has  known  how  to  utter  itself!  Or  is  it 
that  before  the  war  we  were  driving  unconsciously 
into  that  same  admiration  for  purely  creature  com 
forts  and  that  same  trust  in  mechanical  substitutes 


FRENCH  IDEALS  AND  AMERICAN          71 

for  character  which  perverted  modern  Germany? 
The  Frenchman  is  quite  aware  that  his  armchairs 
are  less  comfortable  than  ours,  that  his  elevators  are 
less  practical,  and  that  his  street  cars  are  smaller; 
but  in  explanation  he  reminds  you  that  his  chief 
effort  hitherto  has  been  toward  spiritual  things,  and 
he  knows  quite  as  well  as  we  that  whereas  one  must 
travel  to  America  or  to  Germany  to  enjoy  perfection 
of  machinery,  it  is  to  France  one  must  go  for  art, 
for  scholarship,  and  for  civilization. 

True  to  this  central  principle,  that  the  mind  rather 
than  the  body  is  precious,  the  French  are  more  care 
ful  in  spiritual  things  than  in  physical.  To  give  a 
common  illustration,  many  American  soldiers  have 
wondered  at  the  frankness  of  the  French,  man, 
woman  or  child,  in  matters — shall  we  say  of  phys 
ical  hygiene!  But  the  American  may  not  have  no 
ticed  how  far  the  Frenchman  excels  him  in  spiritual 
delicacy.  We  are  modest  about  our  bodies,  the 
French  are  modest  about  their  minds.  Nakedness 
and  a  frank  acceptance  of  physical  fact  astonish  the 
Frenchman  far  less  than  the  American,  but  on  the 
other  hand  the  Frenchman  will  not  slap  your  shoul 
der  when  he  first  makes  your  acquaintance,  he  will 
not  at  once  call  you  by  your  first  name,  nor  ask  you 
to  address  him  by  his ;  he  will  normally  be  cautious 
about  inviting  a  new  acquaintance  into  his  home.  If 
the  American  casually  decides  that  the  Frenchman 
is  not  fastidious,  it  might  surprise  him  to  know  that 
the  Frenchman  is  shocked  at  the  wholesale  indeli 
cacy  of  our  manners,  which  make  little  distinction 
between  those  friends  who  are  precious  to  us  and 
those  acquaintances  whom  we  have  barely  met. 
Friendship  in  France,  like  every  other  communion 


72  DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS 

of  spirit,  is  a  delicate  relation,  and  there  is  a  kind 
of  art  in  cherishing  it.  This  art  we  Americans  have 
not  greatly  cultivated ;  in  France  it  has  often  seemed 
that  we  hardly  have  eyes  to  recognize  it,  not  even 
in  its  loveliest  forms. 

The  ideal  of  spiritual  modesty  is  illustrated  by 
the  way  the  French  plan  their  homes.  On  the  street 
you  will  find  a  somewhat  severe,  if  not  forbidding, 
wall;  in  the  house  you  will  come  first  on  some  of 
fices  or  servants'  quarters,  and  even  on  the  kitchen, 
but  as  you  penetrate  the  building  you  arrive  at  a 
court  or  a  garden,  and  around  the  court  will  be  the 
family  rooms,  the  household  shrine.  The  French 
man  knows  that,  even  from  a  practical  point  of  view, 
such  an  arrangement  is  the  most  convenient.  But 
his  reasons  for  so  ordering  his  house  is  that  he 
wishes  to  give  the  greatest  privacy  to  the  things 
which  seem  to  him  most  precious.  If  he  has  read 
at  all  of  our  habits  in  the  United  States,  he  knows 
that  we  follow  the  contrary  principle,  placing  on  the 
street  those  rooms  which  are  for  the  graces  of  life, 
and  giving  the  screen  of  privacy  to  the  kitchen,  to 
the  pantry  and  to  the  serving  quarters.  Here  and 
there  in  France  the  astonished  citizen  has  heard  tid 
ings  that  in  the  small  New  England  town,  where  the 
bay-window  of  the  house  is  exposed  to  the  public 
gaze,  the  proud  family  will  place  their  group  of 
Eogers  statuary  on  a  pedestal  in  the  window  and 
will  pull  back  the  curtains.  Amiable  as  this  atti 
tude  is  toward  the  the  curiosity  of  neighbors,  the 
Frenchman  wonders  why  we  do  not  put  our  works 
of  art  on  the  sidewalk  and  have  done  with  it. 


FRENCH  IDEALS  AND  AMERICAN          73 


To  praise  the  French  home  at  the  expense  of  the 
American  may  seem  a  straying  far  afield ;  for  some 
of  us  think  that  no  race  prizes  the  home  as  we  do, 
and  many  have  understood  that  in  French  life  the 
home  counts  for  little,  and  all  of  us  have  heard  it 
said  that  in  the  French  language  there  is  no  word 
for  home.  It  is  true  of  course  that  the  French  atti 
tude  toward  the  home  differs  from  the  English,  as 
the  English  in  turn  differs  from  the  American,  but 
a  competent  comparison  of  the  three  attitudes  will 
not  at  all  be  to  the  disadvantage  of  the  French. 
Certainly  as  between  the  Americans  and  the  French, 
we  are  in  no  position  to  say  that  the  French  under 
estimate  the  home.  They  have  always  had  a  satis 
factory  way  of  naming  it.  Before  the  war  they 
called  it  la  maison,  the  house,  and  to  be  at  home 
was  to  be  chez  sol,  in  one's  own  house.  During  the 
war,  however,  the  word  foyer,  hearth,  a  literary 
word,  has  lost  something  of  its  bookishness  and  has 
crept  into  the  talk  of  the  French  soldier,  perhaps 
because  these  years  have  reminded  him  of  what  his 
home  peculiarly  means.  It  means  in  the  old  Latin 
sense,  a  hearth — a  definite  fire-place,  where  the 
household  flame  burns  continuously  from  generation 
to  generation,  and  where  the  hopes  and  the  sorrows 
of  the  family  are  prayed  for,  or  discussed,  or  suf 
fered,  from  father  to  son.  Especially  the  French 
home  is  a  place  where  the  family  is  born.  We  Amer 
icans  retain  enough  of  the  old  world  tradition  to 
wish  for  our  dead  a  definite  and  consecrated  bury- 


74  DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS 

ing-place;  at  that  end,  at  least,  our  lives  touch  the 
soil. 

But  to  the  old  Latin  spirit,  to  the  Frenchman, 
if  he  should  express  his  frank  opinion,  a  people  who 
touch  the  soil  only  in  the  graveyard  are  not  more 
than  half  decent,  and  their  decency  is  much  delayed. 
What  should  we  think  of  a  people  who  took  no  care 
to  mark  the  place  where  their  dead  lie  ?  The  French 
man  has  the  same  opinion  of  those  who  take  no 
thought  where  their  children  come  to  birth.  For 
him,  the  home  ought  to  be  as  definitely  the  place 
where  people  are  born  as  the  churchyard  is  the  place 
where  they  are  buried,  and  he  feels  as  strongly  a 
pious  sentiment  for  the  room  where  his  race  first 
saw  the  light,  as  for  the  spot  where  each  ancestor 
closed  his  eyes.  In  the  French  Army  the  average 
soldier  comes  from  a  hearth  where  he,  his  father, 
his  grandfather  and  his  great  grandfather  were 
born.  Many  soldiers  come  from  homes  of  a  much 
lengthier  tradition,  but  the  average  reaches  back  at 
least  so  far.  In  the  American  Army  in  France  by 
actual  experiment,  it  was  found  that  only  two  or 
three  per  cent  of  the  soldiers  were  living  at  the  time 
of  their  enlistment  in  the  house  where  they  were 
born — not  to  make  any  reckoning  of  their  fathers 
and  grandfathers.  One  Frenchman  was  heard  to 
remark,  "It  is  you  Americans  who  have  no  word  for 
home  in  your  language;  I  hear  you  say  in  Paris, 
'Let's  go  home  to  the  hotel' — that  word  home  means, 
I  judge,  the  last  place  you  left  your  baggage.  How 
do  you  say  in  American,  *  Let's  go  back  to  the  house 
where  I  was  born,  my  father,  my  grandfather,  and 
my  great-grandfather?'  To  this  question  the 
American  is  tempted  to  retort  that  he  loves  his 


FRENCH  IDEALS  AND  AMERICAN          75 

home  as  dearly  as  other  people,  that  the  American 
home  has  special  virtues  of  which  he  is  peculiarly 
proud,  and  that  he  has  frequently  been  homesick — 
which  implies  that  the  home  is  for  him  something 
more  than  the  last  place  he  left  his  baggage.  But 
even  as  he  makes  the  retort  he  will  realize  that  for 
us,  necessarily  moving  about  as  most  Americans 
have  moved  in  our  new  and  not  quite  settled  country, 
we  have  defined  the  home  as  the  group  of  people, 
the  family ;  we  have  attached  our  affections  to  a  hu 
man  relationship  exclusively,  and  we  have  taught 
ourselves  to  depart  lightly  from  the  actual  soil  on 
which  our  hearth  was  once  founded,  and  from  the 
garden  or  the  fields  in  which  our  childhood  was 
passed. 

When  the  Englishman  speaks  of  home  he  means 
England,  though  he  means  also  of  course  his 
family  circle,  and  perhaps  the  particular  hearth 
beside  which  the  family  circle  may  still  live.  When 
the  American  speaks  of  home  he  means  his  family 
circle,  without  much  reference  to  its  location.  When 
the  Frenchman  speaks  of  his  hearth  he  means  also 
of  course  his  family  circle,  but  more  profoundly  he 
means  the  family  altar  and  the  actual  ground  made 
sacred  to  his  primitive  and  enduring  piety  by  the 
lives  of  his  ancestors  which  have  been  begun  and 
ended  there. 

This  attitude  of  the  French  toward  the  location  of 
the  home  is  the  clue  to  their  patriotism  and  to  their 
religion.  Their  gods  are  found  in  the  soil  of  France 
— the  soil,  not  as  a  figure  of  speech,  but  as  the  actu 
al  earth  which  they  have  worked  with  their  own 
hands.  France  may  be  reckoned  an  agricultural 
nation,  but  the  difference  between  the  agriculture 


76  DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS 

of  Burgundy  or  of  the  Midi  and  the  agriculture  of 
Wisconsin,  let  us  say,  or  of  Minnesota,  is  so  great 
that  it  is  really  a  mistake  to  try  to  express  both  by 
one  word.  The  French  farmer  raises  his  crops,  but 
his  labor  has  another  end  than  the  production  of 
food.  His  toil  is  an  ancient  cult,  the  full  sentiment 
of  which  he  feels  at  every  stage  of  his  work.  No 
wonder  he  is  reluctant  to  let  machinery,  no  matter 
how  efficient,  come  between  him  and  the  earth,  in 
which,  when  he  labors  by  primitive  means,  he  can 
almost  fancy  he  touches  hands  with  his  fathers. 
He  lives  close  to  nature  in  the  poetic  sense  that  he 
is  conscious  of  the  dramatic  vicissitudes  of  weather, 
of  the  large  element  of  chance  in  sunshine  and  rain ; 
with  the  oldest  of  faiths  he  recognizes  dependence 
on  dim  gods,  to  whom  the  fields  and  the  weather  and 
the  human  family  belong.  Whatever  religious  de 
bates  take  place  in  France,  the  essential  religion  of 
the  French  is  not  abstract.  The  French  atheist  has 
it  as  profoundly  as  the  Protestant  or  the  Roman 
Catholic;  it  is  his  feeling  that  the  earth  is  kind  and 
motherly,  that  life  is  a  perpetual  miracle  springing 
from  the  actual  soil,  and  that  to  live  close  to  the  soil 
and  exposed  to  the  weather,  which  seems  to  vitalize 
that  soil,  is  to  take  part  in  the  perpetual  sacrament 
of  existence.  Sharing  this  sentiment,  he  is  near  that 
antique  vision  of  life  which  worshiped  Demeter 
and  Bacchus,  and  indeed  these  gods,  though  they 
now  may  be  unnamed,  are  still  realized  instinctively 
in  the  French  heart.  What  the  Frenchman  will  do 
with  his  life,  therefore,  or  what  kind  of  work  he  will 
devote  himself  to,  cannot  be  determined  entirely  by 
economic  considerations.  He  may  prefer,  for  ex 
ample,  to  make  wine  rather  than  beer,  since  beer  is 


FRENCH  IDEALS  AND  AMERICAN          77 

a  manufactured  thing,  independent  of  weather  and 
the  seasons,  whereas  the  vine  really  is  France — a 
thing  of  religion,  a  cult,  the  product  of  prayers,  of 
a  beneficent  heaven,  and  of  a  fruitful  earth. 

This  national  interpretation  of  the  soil  can  be  il 
lustrated  from  many  a  French  book.  Rostand's 
"Chantecler"  is  a  modern  instance.  To  the  French 
critic  this  phantasy  remains  a  somewhat  unsuccess 
ful  tour  de  force;  he  will  tell  you  that  the  costuming 
of  the  actors  as  barnyard  fowls  made  the  piece  im 
possible  to  present,  and  he  will  point  out  shallow- 
ness  in  the  sentiment  and  lapses  of  taste  in  the  dia 
logue.  But  the  foreigner  can  find  in  "Chantecler" 
an  embodiment  of  the  good  sense,  the  courage  and 
the  idealism  of  the  French,  qualities  which  the  war 
has  brought  into  relief;  in  this  play  he  sees  also, 
and  chiefly,  the  peculiar  French  love  of  the  soil. 
Chantecler,  the  cock,  is  the  emblem  of  France;  he 
crowns  all  weather  vanes.  Our  bird  is  the  eagle,  but 
the  Frenchman  has  a  sense  of  humor  and  does  not 
mind  taking  the  symbol  of  himself  from  his  beloved 
farmyard.  We  might  be  tempted  to  reflect  that  the 
cock  is  not  the  bird  which  flies  high,  and  certainly 
the  foreigner,  contemplating  the  tenacity  with  which 
the  French  have  clung  to  their  small  farms,  has  often 
judged  that  the  imagination  of  this  people  is  too 
limited. 

In  the  United  States  we  have  frankly  boasted  of 
the  grandiose  sweep  which  we  think  character 
izes  our  own  attitude  to  life — "The  eagle  is  a  bird 
of  large  ideas;  the  continent  is  his  home."  But 
the  Frenchman  is  no  less  an  idealist,  even  though 
he  keeps  his  good  sense  and  from  time  to  time 
smiles  at  himself.  Chantecler  believes  that  his  crow- 


78  DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS 

ing  brings  up  the  sun  each  day,  that  the  light  of  the 
world  depends  on  his  singing.  Though  he  loves  the 
earth,  he  has  no  great  turn  for  facts;  the  soil  for 
him  is  poetry.  In  France  it  is  the  women  who  have 
the  greatest  sense  of  fact,  and  in  the  play  the  Golden 
Pheasant,  who  loves  Chantecler,  tries  to  persuade 
him  out  of  his  heroic  illusion.  When  she  asks  what 
is  the  secret  of  his  marvelous  singing,  his  reply  is 
one  of  the  fine  illustrations  of  French  sentiment  for 
the  soil:  "I  never  sing  but  when  my  claws  have 
weeded  the  grass,  and  dislodged  the  pebbles,  and 
have  reached  at  last  down  to  the  soft  black  soil ;  then, 
when  I  touch  the  good  earth,  I  sing,  and  that  is  half 
the  mystery,  half  the  secret  of  my  song — not  the  kind 
of  song  you  must  think  up  as  you  go  along,  but  the 
kind  that  flows  through  you  like  sap  from  the  earth 
you  are  rooted  in." 

In  a  quite  different  direction,  the  ideal  of  the 
hearth  and  of  the  soil  throws  light  on  a  much  mis 
understood  side  of  French  character.  The  worship 
of  the  ancestral  hearth  and  of  the  ancestral  earth 
explains  the  small  French  family.  Critics  of  France 
have  encouraged  us  to  believe  that  her  families  are 
small  because  of  some  decadence  in  the  race,  but  if 
this  is  true,  the  decadence  must  have  started  several 
hundred  years  ago.  In  France  you  can  buy  in  any 
stationer's  store,  among  other  mottoes  with  which 
to  decorate  your  wall,  the  framed  copy  of  a  sonnet, 
first  printed  in  the  sixteenth  century,  on  "Le 
Bonheur  de  ce  Monde."  In  this  inventory  of  happi 
ness  we  begin  with  these  ideals,  "A  comfortable 
home,  clean  and  beautiful,  a  garden  wall  tapestried 
with  fragrant  trees,  fruits  and  good  wine,  a  simple 
life,  and  few  children."  To-day  as  in  the  sixteenth 


FRENCH  IDEALS  AND  AMERICAN    79 

century  the  French  father  and  mother,  mindful  of 
the  household  shrine,  pray  for  one  son  and  for 
one  daughter,  and  for  no  more  children.  The 
son  will  inherit  the  hearth,  and  the  daughter  will 
marry  some  boy  who  inherits  a  hearth,  but  what 
provision  can  be  made  for  a  second  son  or  for  a  sec 
ond  daughter?  The  family  birthplace  can  no  more 
be  divided  than  the  graves  of  one's  ancestors.  This 
point  of  view  has  its  perils  for  France,  now  espe 
cially  when  German  imperialism  has  made  a  religion 
of  the  large  family — all  the  more  now  that  France 
has  lost  so  much  of  her  man-power.  But  however 
mistaken  the  French  ideal  may  be  in  the  light  of 
other  social  theories  and  practices,  at  least  their 
own  theory  of  the  family  is  a  noble  one,  and  it  has 
made  home  life  in  France  precious  and  sacred  to  a 
degree  which  should  put  to  silence  any  criticism  the 
foreigner  in  his  ignorance  might  make.  If  the 
French  hearth  has  fewer  comforts  than  the  American 
apartment,  if  it  lacks  the  plumbing  which  seems 
to  be  the  real  god  of  the  American  soul,  at  least  it 
is  a  genuine  piety  that  has  kept  the  house  unchanged, 
and  those  who  live  by  the  French  fireside  are  con 
scious  to-day,  as  few  other  people  are,  of  the  dignity 
of  the  home. 

Perhaps  because  of  this  consciousness  the  French 
feel  the  worth  of  the  individual  more  than  we  do, 
which  means  of  course  that  they  appreciate  the 
dignity  of  old  age.  Our  American  soldiers,  seeing 
decrepit  old  men  breaking  stones,  rather  inefficiently, 
along  French  roads,  have  often  commented  on  the 
impractical  way  France  has  of  doing  things ;  at  home 
we  should  use  the  stone  crusher  and  some  road  ma 
chines,  and  the  old  men  would  be  out  of  sight.  With 


80  DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS 

us  they  would  indeed  be  out  of  sight,  in  the  poor- 
house  perhaps,  or  in  the  old  people's  home,  con 
veniently  shelved  until  their  time  should  come  to 
die.  France  does  not  like  poor-houses,  nor  old  peo 
ple 's  homes.  The  proper  home  for  old  people  is  their 
own  hearth.  The  state,  therefore,  humanely  pro 
vides  such  moderate  work  as  aged  men  can  perform 
by  the  roadside,  and  society  finds  such  simple  duties 
for  old  women — perhaps  tending  the  flocks — as  will 
keep  even  those  whom  we  would  call  inefficient  still 
in  their  place  in  society,  earning  with  dignity  their 
right  to  live  among  their  f  ellowmen,  no  matter  what 
their  age.  Once  more  "Chantecler"  furnishes  an 
illustration,  in  the  old  hen,  the  cock's  mother,  who 
dispenses  wisdom  in  shrewd  proverbs  from  over  the 
top  of  the  wicker  basket  in  which  she  finishes  her 
days. 

When  we  understand  this  noble  attitude  of 
France,  this  frank  envisaging  of  all  of  human  life, 
quiet  old  age  as  well  as  vigorous  youth,  this  desire 
to  make  life  kindly  and  human,  we  are  not  likely  to 
think  so  well  of  ourselves ;  for  nobody  in  his  senses 
would  choose  for  his  own  later  years  the  poor-house 
or  the  old  folks '  home  rather  than  a  life  in  the  open 
air,  as  in  France,  with  self-respect  and  an  active 
work  still  to  do  for  society. 


rn 

When  the  Frenchman  and  the  Anglo-Saxon  agree 
that  spirit  is  more  than  matter,  the  Frenchman  does 
not  mean  exactly  what  the  Anglo-Saxon  means.  For 


FRENCH  IDEALS  AND  AMERICAN          81 

us  the  life  of  the  spirit  is  emotional  rather  than  in 
tellectual  ;  for  the  Frenchman  the  life  of  the  spirit  is 
both  intellectual  and  emotional,  with  emphasis  per 
haps  on  the  intellect — a  life  of  feeling,  certainly,  of 
sentiment  and  of  intuition,  but  chiefly  a  life  of  rea 
son.  Even  while  we  agree,  therefore,  in  the  con 
trast  between  matter  and  spirit,  we  may  be  quite 
far  apart  in  our  understanding  of  the  words,  and  the 
separation  may  reoccur  in  our  use  of  certain  other 
words,  equally  familiar/  When,  for  example,  we 
hear  France  spoken  of  as  the  land  of  liberty  and  of 
art,  perhaps  we  miss  the  special  point  of  the  remark, 
since  we  do  not  know  what  liberty  or  art  is  in  the 
French  scheme  of  life,  nor  are  we  aware  that  in 
France  art  and  science  mean  more  nearly  the  same 
thing  than  they  do  in  the  United  States.  With  us 
liberty  implies  the  absence  or  the  removal  of  some 
thing — the  word  suggests  an  escape;  with  the 
French,  liberty  implies  the  acquisition  of  something, 
and  the  word  suggests  control.  To  us  art  is  an  ad 
dition  to  life,  a  luxury;  to  the  French  it  is  a  way 
of  living.  Our  art  is  to  be  found  in  museums,  in 
studios,  in  rich  men's  houses — we  think  that  if  ever 
we  have  the  time  and  the  money,  we  too  shall  enjoy 
the  privilege  of  art ;  but  in  France  art  is  a  quality  of 
every-day  existence,  without  which  life  is  not  con 
sidered  worth  while.  It  is  hardly  too  much  to  say 
further  that,  to  the  French  mind,  art  and  science 
are  practically  identical ;  at  least,  the  words  liberty, 
art,  and  science,  as  the  French  use  them,  involve  a 
single  ideal,  and  form  together  a  harmonious  com 
ment  on  the  natural  conditions  in  which  man  finds 
himself.  \  The  average  Frenchman,  though  his 
philosophy  may  be  unconscious  and  inarticulate, 


82  DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS 

conceives  of  the  world  as  made  up  of  forces  and  in 
stincts,  themselves  neither  good  nor  bad — blind 
forces,  as  we  say — which  however  can  be  directed 
to  good  or  to  bad  ends,  according  as  we  have  the 
skill  and  the  desire.  Not  all  Frenchmen,  of  course, 
take  this  point  of  view;  there  are  no  doubt  many 
who  think  as  the  middle  ages  taught  that  in  essentials 
human  nature  and  the  nature  of  the  world  about  us 
are  bad  and  need  repression ;  there  are  many  more 
who  believe  with  Rousseau  that  nature,  especially 
human  nature,  is  essentially  good,  and  that  to  be 
happy  man  needs  only  the  opportunity  to  fol 
low  his  instincts.  But  th"£  majority  of  men 
and  women  in  France  approve  by  tradition 
and  by  training  the  humane  teaching  which  readers 
of  books  associate  with  the  great  name  of  Aristotle 
— that  excellence  lies  in  the  control  which  man  es 
tablishes  over  the  forces  of  nature — over  his  own 
nature  to  begin  with;  and  that  without  intelligent 
direction  of  these  forces  man  is  a  slave  or  a  passive 
victim,  as  a  boat  without  a  pilot  is  the  plaything  of 
the  storm;  but  that  in  the  measure  of  man's  knowl 
edge  of  the  forces  that  surround  him  he  becomes  free 
to  achieve  whatever  destiny  he  dreams  of,  as  the 
pilot  who  understands  the  mechanics  of  sailing  is 
free  to  sail  where  he  will,  and  the  wind  is  for  him 
no  longer  an  obstacle  nor  a  difficulty  >  but  a  source 
of  power.  In  this  point  of  view  art  and  science  are 
much  the  same  thing ;  man  is  free  only  in  proportion 
as  he  controls  the  forces  of  nature  and  in  proportion 
as  these  forces  do  not  control  him,  and  he  can  take 
control  of  these  forces  only  by  study,  by  intelligence, 
by  self-discipline — virtues  which  in  operation  be 
come  science-or  art. 


FRENCH  IDEALS  AND  AMERICAN          83 

The  implications  of  this  doctrine  make  clear  why 
the  French  prize  above  other  virtues  reasonableness 
and  self-control,  and  why  so  eager  a  desire  for  in 
dividualism  combines  in  them  with  a  profound  re 
spect  for  tradition.  Their  search  for  freedom,  as 
we  have  just  defined  it,  makes  sacred  a  man's  in 
dividual  personality,  but  at  the  same  time  the  desire 
to  understand  the  eternal  forces  of  life  in  order  to 
control  them  compels  respect  for  the  experiences 
and  for  the  wisdom  of  the  past.  The  world  has  called 
humane  that  Greek  morality  which  laid  upon  man 
himself,  rather  than  upon  heredity  or  environment, 
the  responsibility  of  choosing  the  best;  and  of  all 
nations  the  French  have  preserved  longest,  in  the 
midst  of  contradictory  modern  philosophies,  the 
humane  ideal. 

They  say  with  Aristotle  that  where  there  is  no 
choice  of  action  there  can  be  no  virtue,  and  that 
where  men  are  compelled  to  do  right,  evil  may 
indeed  be  prohibited  but  there  can  be  no  positive 
good.  The  man  who  by  temperament  is  ignorant 
of  fear  is,  of  course,  no  coward,  yet  he  is  not  brave ; 
we  must  call  him  rash,  and  we  must  deny  him  the 
credit  of  being  virtuous,  for  he  has  acted  as  irre 
sponsibly  as  the  feather  that  floats  in  the  wind,  or 
as  the  stone  that  sinks  through  the  water.  He  has 
fulfilled  his  nature,  to  be  sure,  but  without  conscious 
choice.  Those  who  are  sheltered  from  temptation 
are  neither  good  nor  bad — they  are  simply  untried. 
To  be  moral,  therefore,  the  Frenchman  thinks  one 
must  be  absolutely  free,  even  free  from  the  law 
itself;  for  that  reason  we  need  not  be  surprised  to 
find  in  French  life  at  all  points  what  at  first  seems 
an  unmeaning  paradox,  that  though  the  Frenchman's 


84  DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS 

ideal  of  culture  by  its  very  reasonableness  will 
sooner  or  later  articulate  itself  into  laws,  yet  the 
Frenchman  will  resent  the  existence  of  the  laws — 
he  will  create  Academies  and  then  make  fun  of  them 
— and  why  not  ?  since  an  ideal  so  articulated  becomes 
a  kind  of  constraint  toward  excellence,  and  to  that 
extent  it  robs  man  of  the  opportunity  to  be  virtuous. 
When  he  is  quite  free,  however,  the  Frenchman  feels 
induced  to  use  his  liberty  wisely — at  least  it  seems 
to  him  common  sense  to  profit  by  the  experience 
stored  up  in  the  past,  in  the  form  of  tradition  and 
more  subtly  in  the  guise  of  taste.  When  you  are 
free  to  make  what  you  will  of  life — that  is,  when 
you  have  the  skill  to  make  what  you  will  of  it,  you 
begin  to  see,  as  the  profoundest  kind  of  morality, 
the  opportunity  to  discriminate  among  your  ideals ; 
and  this  choice  involves  taste.  Perhaps  we  might 
say  that  the  Anglo-Saxon  and  the  Latin  races  seek 
in  general  the  same  degree  of  excellence,  but  at  least 
they  define  life  differently,  and  from  the  difference 
in  this  initial  definition  comes  a  wide  difference  in 
the  quality  of  their  final  ideals.  Since  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  has  been  brought  up  in  a  philosophy  which 
on  the  whole  thinks  of  life  as  a  collection  of  bad  im 
pulses,  of  temptations  to  resist  or  to  run  away  from, 
against  that  background  his  ideal  achievement  is 
character,  goodness,  which  is  to  him  the  chief  moral 
ity.  Since  the  Frenchman  conceives  of  life  as  a 
mass  of  unorganized  and  neutral  forces  to  be  brought 
into  order  only  by  intelligent  mastery  of  them,  and 
since  that  order  will  vary  according  as  his 
knowledge  of  other  men's  experiences  teaches  him  to 
discriminate  and  to  know  the  best,  against  the  back 
ground  of  this  problem  his  ideal  virtues  are  intel- 


FRENCH  IDEALS  AND  AMERICAN          85 

ligence  and  taste,  and  he  defines  morality  chiefly 
in  these  terms. 

We  cannot  understand  all  that  the  war  meant  to 
France  unless  we  reflect  that  in  the  German  legions 
a  very  different  philosophy  had  taken  arms.  The 
French  soldier  recognized  in  the  atrocities  inflicted 
upon  his  country  and  upon  his  hearth  a  demonstra 
tion  of  ways  of  thought  not  his,  which,  if  successful, 
would  make  it  imposible  for  him  to  keep  his  way  of 
thought  at  all.  Not  every  German,  nor  many  of 
them  perhaps,  had  read  Nietzsche  and  Treitschke, 
of  whom  we  heard  much  at  the  beginning  of  the  war: 
but  it  seems  that  these  writers  are  typical,  and  that 
if  they  did  not  influence  popular  German  thought, 
they  were  influenced  by  it.  Their  philosophy,  illus 
trated  on  a  colossal  scale  by  the  German  armies,  con 
ceives  of  the  world  as  a  collection  of  forces  which 
yield  power,  not  when  they  are  controlled,  but  when 
they  are  followed.  When  we  chop  wood,  to  give  the 
simplest  illustration,  we  do  not  lay  the  log  against 
the  ceiling  and  lift  the  axe ;  we  make  use  of  gravita 
tion  to  do  our  work.  '  '  Something  is  checked  in  every 
impulse  which  reason  guides — better  to  follow  the 
impulse/'  says  this  philosophy;  "if  the  impulse  is 
to  selfishness,  let  us  be  more  selfish ;  if  to  cruelty,  let 
us  be  more  cruel;  if  war  is  terrible,  let  us  add  to 
it  another  terror;  whatever  else  we  do,  let  us  not 
arrest  life  with  what  the  French  would  call  the  con 
trol  of  reason,  but  which  to  our  philosophy  is  but 
hesitation  and  lack  of  nerve.  So  to  take  life  as  one 
vast  selfishness,  as  one  unvaried  sailing  before  the 
wind,  is  to  be  successful,  to  be  a  superman. "  That 
such  a  philosophy  conscientiously  followed  will  in 
deed  yield  power  of  a  sort,  the  French  would  not 


86  DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS 

deny,  nor  can  our  armies  deny  it  after  facing  the 
poison  gas  and  the  organized  devastation  of  recent 
years ;  but  this  is  power  of  a  kind  that  the  French 
spirit  believes  ignoble — better  to  perish  than  to  sur 
vive  by  it,  for  it  makes  the  spirit  of  man  conform 
more  and  more  to  the  purely  brute  operations  of 
the  world,  it  implies  an  efficiency  impersonal,  irre 
sponsible  and  cruel,  and  finally  it  strengthens  those 
impulses  of  the  body  which,  if  uncontrolled,  are  but 
prison  bars  for  the  spirit ;  whereas  the  ideal  of  in 
telligent  choice,  the  humane  ideal,  looks  toward  the 
dignity  of  the  individual,  considers  the  right  of  other 
men  to  be  dignified  in  their  own  personalities,  and 
seeks  to  bring  about  that  subordination  of  material 
and  bodily  forces  to  the  guidance  of  the  spirit,  which 
alone  to  the  humane  philosophy  is  freedom. 


IV 

No  one  can  understand  this  French  conception  of 
art,  as  no  one  could  understand  the  similar  Greek 
conception,  without  distinguishing  clearly  between 
art  and  artifice.  The  first  comment  of  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  on  all  art  is  likely  to  be  that  it  is  artificial; 
his  comment  upon  the  French  life,  itself  an  art,  is 
that  it  partakes  too  much  of  the  quality  of  artifice. 
Such  a  comment  assumes  civilization  as  a  natural 
thing.  The  Frenchman  knows  better.  When  our 
mothers  sent  us  to  childhood  parties  and  cautioned 
us  to  behave  naturally,  they  did  not  mean  what  they 
said ;  they  meant  that  we  should  wear  our  acquired 
arts  of  courtesy  as  though  they  were  natural.  In 


FRENCH  IDEALS  AND  AMERICAN          87 

that  sense  all  civilization  is  not  natural,  and  French 
life,  being  the  most  highly  civilized,  has  most  the 
character  of  art.  But  the  French  themselves  are 
even  more  severe  than  we  are  in  condemning  artifice, 
which  to  them  is  not  art  but  its  most  perverse  enemy. 
Art  for  them  must  be  frank  and  sincere,  a  quite  open 
control  of  means  to  reach  an  intelligible  ideal. 
There  is  nothing  secret  about  it;  its  glory  is  the 
large  part  that  reason  and  calculation  frankly  play 
in  it — as  any  choice  between  good  and  evil  should 
be  calculating  and  reasonable.  Artifice,  on  the  other 
hand,  is  the  putting  on  of  disguise,  the  assuming  of 
methods  which  do  not  harmonize  with  the  genuine 
purpose ;  it  is  a  too  great  emphasis  upon  means  and 
a  too  slight  valuation  of  the  end.  Art  is,  as  it  were, 
the  contrast  or  other  pole  to  nature ;  it  is  the  condi 
tion  which  is  reached  when  man  has  given  an  in 
terpretation  and  a  direction  to  the  chaos  of  crude 
experience. 

In  between  these  extremes  is  artifice,  partaking 
of  the  quality  of  both — half  directed,  half  mean 
ingless.  It  is  often  a  weakness  of  the  race,  how 
ever,  to  prefer  artifice  to  art,  since  in  artifice  the 
untrained  mind  can  recognize  so  much  of  what 
seems  reality — that  is,  so  much  of  what  remains  in 
the  crude  state  of  nature.  It  is  the  very  condemna 
tion  of  artifice,  however,  that  it  is  an  imitation.  In 
Chantecler's  farmyard  we  hear  suddenly  the  cry  of 
the  cuckoo.  A  silly  hen  runs  up ;  i  i  Which  is  it,  the 
one  in  the  woods,  or  the  one  in  the  farmer's  clock?" 
"The  one  in  the  woods, "  they  tell  her.  ' <Ah,"  she 
sighs  with  relief,  "I  was  afraid  I  had  missed  the 
other  one. ' ' 

Illustrations  of  this  French  point  of  view  occur 


88  DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS 

most  easily  in  the  realms  of  judgment  in  which  the 
Anglo-Saxon  is  most  readily  severe — in  those  actions 
which  he  will  dispose  of  promptly  as  vicious  or 
wrong.  Some  of  these  actions  the  French  tempera 
ment  will  excuse,  or  at  least  will  reserve  opinion 
on  them,  since  they  may  well  be  sincere  ex 
pressions  of  genuine  ideals;  the  ideals  may 
be  matters  of  taste,  but  they  have  been  reached 
by  choice,  and  they  imply  no  failure  on  the 
actor 's  part  to  assume  responsibility  for  his  own 
destiny.  Other  conduct,  however,  a  Frenchman  will 
utterly  condemn  with  more  'than  Anglo-Saxon 
severity,  though  at  first  the  case  seems  much  the 
same  as  that  with  which  he  has  dealt  leniently;  he 
has  no  forgiveness  for  behavior  in  which  the  actor 
fails  to  be  intelligent  and  responsible — in  which, 
consequently,  the  actor  is  insincere,  wearing  a  mask 
on  his  real  intentions.  From  this  point  of  view  a 
Frenchman  was  speaking  of  a  noted  writer,  now  in 
his  dotage,  who  lives  with  a  woman  whom  he  intro 
duces  as  his  housekeeper,  but  who  is  really  the 
mother  of  his  children,  and  who  now  in  his  old  age 
directs  his  affairs  for  him  with  something  of  the 
tyrant's  hand.  The  Frenchman  speaking  of  this  case 
condemned  it  utterly;  then  remembering  that  he 
spoke  to  an  Anglo-Saxon,  he  added  quickly:  "I  do 
not  presume  to  pass  judgment  on  his  love  affairs — 
I  would  not  say  that  they  were  wrong ;  but  for  such 
a  great  man  to  disguise  the  facts  of  his  life  and  to 
be  told  to  do  this  and  to  do  that  by  some  one  of 
whom  he  seems  afraid,  is  altogether  ignoble."  In 
other  words,  Abelard  and  Heloise  are  admirable  to 
the  imagination,  no  matter  how  little  their  career 
may  recommend  itself  as  a  desirable  program,  but 


FRENCH  IDEALS  AND  AMERICAN          89 

Abelard  must  not  allow  himself  to  be  henpecked.  It 
is  not  only  in  doubtful  spheres  of  conduct,  however, 
that  the  French  exact  a  sincere  art  of  life ;  they  are 
also  on  their  guard  against  artificial  goodness.  They 
can  understand  lovers  and  saints  equally — they  de 
spise  equally  the  street-walker  and  the  professional 
good  man.  The  most  revealing  caution  the  French 
man  can  give  to  the  Anglo-Saxon  is  the  shrewd  ad 
vice,  "Do  not  let  my  people  suspect  that  you  are 
earning  your  living  by  being  good/' 

No  better  example  need  be  sought  of  the  French 
conception  of  art  than  in  the  field  of  manners.  Even 
in  France,  let  us  admit  quickly,  there  are  people 
whose  manners  seem  artificial  and  others  whose 
manners  are  as  we  say  natural,  yet  all  manners 
everywhere  are  acquired;  and  in  France  they  are 
recognized  as  the  means  in  ordinary  conduct  by 
which  man  achieves  freedom  in  his  relations  with 
other  men.  Without  manners  we  should  meet  our 
fellows  only  on  the  plane  of  those  physical  appetites 
which  indeed  furnish  their  own  expression,  but 
which  limit  the  range  of  action  for  the  spirit.  Far 
from  being  spontaneous  or  uncalculated,  manners  to 
the  French  mind  should  always  have  a  definite 
purpose;  if  this  purpose  is  clear  and  admirable,  the 
manners  also  will  be  admirable  and  sincere,  but  if 
the  manners  have  no  purpose  or  an  insufficient  one, 
they  will  be  artificial.  Just  how  many  calling  cards 
one  leaves  at  the  door,  is  a  matter  of  little  conse 
quence  ;  convention  here  is  likely  to  be  artificial.  But 
table  manners,  to  take  the  opposite  extreme,  will  be 
sincere  and  noble,  since  they  are  supremely  neces 
sary  for  any  society  which  would  live  in  the  spirit. 
The  purpose  of  table  manners  is  to  disguise  the  un- 


90  DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS 

doubted  fact  that  at  meal  time  a  number  of  animals 
are  gathered  to  feed.  If  men  wished  to  observe  in 
the  process  of  eating  no  other  fact  than  this,  man 
ners  would  not  be  necessary ;  but  we  would  make  of 
the  sharing  of  food  a  sacrament  of  higher  kinds  of 
sustenance,  an  exchange  of  ideas  of  spiritual  bread, 
and  to  do  this  we  cultivate  such  conduct  as  will 
prevent  the  physical  fact  from  obtruding.  For  that 
reason  we  tell  children  not  to  reach  too  frantically 
for  the  breadplate.  If  this  illustration  seems 
academic,  it  will  not  seem  so  to  those  who  have 
watched  American  soldiers  and  French  side  by  side 
on  the  battle  front  >at  mess  time.  The  American  sol 
dier,  lined  up  before  the  kitchen,  received  his  rations 
with  great  expedition,  sat  down  on  the  nearest  rock, 
or  leaned  against  a  tree,  or  simply  stood  in  the  mid 
dle  of  the  road,  cleared  his  plate,  washed  it  up,  and 
got  the  meal  over  with.  The  French  soldier,  by  con 
trast,  would  seek  always  three  or  four  companions 
and  would  sit  down  with  the  group,  in  the  mud,  if 
necessary,  for  a  half  hour  or  an  hour  of  what  could 
be  called  by  no  less  dignified  term  than  a  ritual  of 
friendship.  Whatever  the  degree  of  their  education, 
their  conversation  was  likely  to  be  a  sharing  of 
thought  and  a  feeding  of  the  mind.  That  this  dif 
ference  between  their  use  of  manners  and  our  neglect 
of  them  was  not  unnoticed  on  their  part,  they  evi 
denced  in  many  a  shrewd  remark:  "Why  is  it,"  one 
pojlu  was  asked,  "that  even  near  the  front  you  give 
so  much  time  to  your  meals,  and  carry  on  such  con 
versations  as  one  would  expect  only  at  a  dinner 
table  in  time  of  peace! "  "Because/'  answered  the 
little  man  in  blue,  "if  we  are  fighting  for  civiliza 
tion,  we  might  as  well  remain  civilized."  This  ideal 


FRENCH  IDEALS  AND  AMERICAN          91 

of  manners  can  be  summed  up  in  the  word  etiquette, 
which  of  course  we  took  from  the  French.  We  seem 
to  have  taken  it,  as  many  an  American  soldier  now 
suspects,  from  the  end  of  the  French  freight  cars, 
where  the  label  is  pasted  to  show  the  destination  of 
the  cargo.  The  second  and  the  third  syllables  of 
this  word  give  us  onr  "ticket."  What  is  etiquette? 
To  us  perhaps  it  is  a  system  of  manners  one  must 
cultivate  if  one  wishes  to  be  like  other  folk  in  arti 
ficial  society.  To  the  French,  etiquette  in  every  walk 
of  life  is  quite  simply  the  label  which  shows  where 
you  are  going.  Perhaps  it  would  be  better  to  say, 
not  that  your  destination  is  the  consequence  of  your 
manners,  but  that  your  manners  are  chosen  care 
fully  to  direct  you  to  the  end  you  desirer  Do  you 
wish  to  talk  with  the  shop-keeper,  or  with  the  Presi 
dent,  or  with  the  Sultan  of  Turkey  ?  There  are  ways 
and  means  of  doing  so,  and  if  you  care  enough  to 
master  this  etiquette  you  can  have  your  will,  but  this 
is  a  career  for  intelligence,  for  patience  and  for  pur 
pose — also  for  the  imagination.  The  French  think 
highly  of  manners  for  the  reason  that  they  esteem 
intelligence  as  a  divine  thing ;  manners  indicate  that 
men  and  women  have  conceived  of  an  ideal  and  are 
studying  to  reach  it,  leaving  as  little  as  possible  to 
chance,  and  trusting  as  much  as  possible  to  the  mind. 
"What  do  you  suppose  is  the  derivation  of  this 
word?"  a  Frenchman  was  asked.  "I  think  it  may 
come,"  he  said,  "from  the  Greek  word  which  gives 
us  ethics."  He  was  wrong,  but  his  false  etymology 
indicated  the  truth  that  for  the  French  spirit,  in 
telligence  and  manners  are  moral  duties. 


92  DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS 


Let  us  return  to  the  idea  with  which  we  began. 
What  one  thinks  of  the  French  will  eventually  de 
pend  on  what  choice  one  makes  of  a  philosophy  of 
life.  It  is  for  that  reason  that  our  stay  in  France 
has  been  particularly  important,  as  a  kind  of  test 
of  American  civilization.  Differences  of  language 
can  be  overcome,  and  superficial  differences  of 
custom,  but  there  will  remain  the  question  whether 
we  really  share  the  point  of  view  which  underlies 
the  whole  culture  of  France — whether  we  really  be 
lieve  that  the  spirit  is  more  than  the  body,  and 
whether  we  interpret  spirit  merely  as  fine  feeling, 
or  as  emotion  guided  by  intelligence.  The  Anglo- 
Saxon,  and  those  of  us  who  live  in  the  Anglo-Saxon 
tradition,  have  been  brought  up  to  respect  emotion 
as  something  opposed  to  reason.  Eeason  we  say  is 
cold;  when  we  call  a  man  calculating  we  mean  no 
compliment.  That  poetry  or  prose  we  esteem  most 
highly  which  is  most  emotional ;  the  work  of  Pope  or 
of  Swift  we  incline  to  rate  second,  since  reason  so 
obviously  is  at  the  heart  of  it.  Certainly  a  life  with 
out  feeling,  no  matter  how  rational,  would  be  an 
existence  almost  diabolical;  it  is  a  fair  charge 
against  such  a  poet  as  Alexander  Pope  that  his  art 
expresses  too  little  emotion  to  satisfy  the  experience 
of  the  average  man.  Yet  if  one  is  to  follow  a  humane 
philosophy — that  is,  if  one  is  to  believe  that  what 
ever  order  is  in  the  world  must  be  put  there  by 
reason,  by  imagination,  by  the  intelligence  of  man, 
one  must  class  reason,  intelligence  and  imagination 


FRENCH  IDEALS  AND  AMERICAN          93 

as  the  divine  instruments  by  which  man  works,  and 
one  must  find  even  in  ideas  themselves  a  subject 
for  emotion.  It  is  not  unusual  in  a  French  theater 
to  see  an  audience  applaud  an  idea  as  we  might  ap 
plaud  an  action,  and  more  than  once  in  her  history 
France  has  given  herself  as  a  nation  to  the  prosecu 
tion  of  the  most  advanced  and  exalted  ideas.  More 
than  other  nations  she  has  the  credit  of  following 
her  ideals  to  their  logical  end,  cost  what  it  may ;  not 
even  her  own  superb  common  sense  can  distract  her 
from  the  reckless  pursuit  of  a  dream  once  possessed. 
When  Chantecler  discovers  that  the  sun  has  risen 
even  without  his  song,  he  clings  to  his  ideal;  "I 
must  sing. "  "  But  how  can  you  keep  on  when  your 
work  perhaps  is  useless, "  asks  the  Golden  Pheasant. 
"I  must  work."  "Even  if  you  don't  make  the  sun 
rise?"  persists  the  Pheasant.  "That  is  because  I 
am  the  herald  of  a  dawn  more  remote!  My  cries 
pierce  the  night,  making  those  day-wounds  men 
call  stars.  Never  shall  I  see  shine  on  the  steeples 
the  light  of  the  finished  heaven,  the  day  made  all 
of  stars  touching  side  by  side ;  but  if  I  keep  on  sing 
ing,  punctual  and  loud  enough,  and  if  in  each  farm 
yard  the  other  cocks  sing  after  me,  loud  enough  and 
just  on  time,  I  think  there  will  be  no  more  night." 
"When?"  insists  the  Pheasant.  "One  of  these 
days!" 

Since  1870,  it  is  true,  the  government  of  France, 
and  perhaps  her  whole  people,  have  neglected  the 
development  of  their  national  resources,  have  failed 
to  improve  village  life,  have  let  go  by  those  modern 
inventions  for  comfort  and  sanitation  which  the 
American  on  his  first  arrival  in  France  sadly  misses ; 
but  it  is  also  true  that  since  1870  France  has  lived 


94  DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS 

under  such  a  threat  as  the  American,  safe  in  his  own 
continent,  cannot  easily  understand.  And  more  pro 
foundly  it  is  true  that  France  has  permitted  this 
shadow  to  affect  only  her  activities  in  the  realm  of 
physical  comfort;  the  fear  of  Germany  has  never 
touched  her  spirit.  On  the  contrary,  worn  and  dis- 
ahled  as  in  many  ways  she  now  is,  France  is  still  the 
country  toward  which  artists  and  thinkers  love  best 
to  turn,  as  likely  to  find  there  intelligence,  reason 
ableness,  and  sensitiveness  to  beauty,  and  a  clear 
choice  always  for  the  things  which  naake  the  soul  of 
man  great. 


IV 

SOCIETY  AS  A  UNIVEESITY 

(For  the  opening  of  the  American  E.  F.  University  at 
Beaune,_C6te  D'Or,  France.) 

THE  university  which  we  are  about  to  open  here 
has  been  built  in  response  to  certain  needs.  It  is 
conditioned  by  the  war  background  from  which  those 
needs  have  grown,  but  it  looks  also  to  the  future. 
We  intend  here  to  save  for  some  good  use  if  possible 
the  time  that  would  otherwise  be  spent  in  irksome 
waiting  for  the  ship  that  is  to  take  us  home ;  we  in 
tend  to  teach  and  to  study  whatever  things  the  wait 
ing  army  may  desire  to  learn ;  we  intend  also  to  seize 
out  of  the  very  handicaps  and  necessities  of  the  mo 
ment  some  lasting  advantage.  In  our  earlier  school 
or  college  days  perhaps  we  thought  of  education  as 
merely  one  of  the  special  enterprises  which  a  civil 
ized  state  is  expected  to  support.  Perhaps  we 
thought  that  schools  and  colleges  spring  from  earth 
full-grown,  that  methods  of  instruction,  however 
unpleasant,  are  inevitable  and  unchangeable,  and 
that  the  best  use  of  a  classroom  is  to  escape  from  it 
once  for  all  into  the  real  world.  We  may  never  have 
cared  greatly  to  learn;  we  may  have  thought  that 
no  red-blooded  creature  ever  cared  to  teach.  Now, 
however,  we  are  reduced  to  a  society  of  fellow- 
citizens,  each  trying  to  help  the  other  to  a  little 

95 


96  DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS 

knowledge.  The  university  which  rises  in  these 
simple  buildings  and  with  such  meager  equipment 
illustrates  to  us  what  education  really  is  when  stated 
in  simple  and  sincere  terms.  Here  we  find  in  what 
sense  society  itself — that  is,  any  group  of  human 
beings  who  live  together — may  be  for  the  best  in 
tellectual  purposes  a  university. 


In  the  first  place  we  observe  that  this  university 
is  devoted  to  adult  education.  Even  if  we  are  not 
all  somewhat  advanced  in  years  beyond  the  age  when 
men  usually  attend  school  or  college,  at  least  the 
experience  of  the  war  has  been  for  most  of  us  the 
equivalent  of  time,  and  we  approach  our  studies  here 
with  a  maturity  not  vouchsafed  to  the  average  fresh 
man.  Did  we  ever  think  it  disgraceful  for  a  man  to 
be  still  going  to  school  when  he  is,  as  we  say,  beyond 
the  school  age?  May  we  learn  here  and  carry  back 
home  with  us  the,  important  truth  that  no  man  should 
ever  consider  himself  beyond  the  school  age.  The 
education  of  adults  ought  to  be  as  natural  in  society 
as  the  education  of  youth.  There  was  a  time  in 
American  history  when  a  college  boy  left  his  course 
at  the  end  of  the  sophomore  or  junior  year,  and 
earned  the  money  to  complete  his  education.  Fifty 
years  ago  some  of  the  best  New  England  colleges 
postponed  the  spring  term  until  fairly  late  in  the 
summer,  and  began  the  autumn  term  fairly  early, 
so  that  in  mid-winter  the  seniors  could  be  free  for 
teaching  school.  The  record  is  clear  that  the  stu- 


SOCIETY  AS  A  UNIVERSITY  97 

dents  who  in  this  way  varied  their  studies  with  prac 
tice  achieved  far  better  results  as  scholars  than 
those  do  now  whom  we  try  to  crani  for  life — try, 
that  is,  to  pour  into  them,  as  though  into  a  reservoir, 
all  the  wisdom,  all  the  technical  and  professional 
knowledge,  all  the  artistic  inspiration,  all  the  good 
manners,  all  the  ideas  they  will  ever  need.  It  is  to 
be  feared  that  the  college  graduate  who  is  thus 
charged  once  for  all  with  culture  must  be  economical 
of  the  supply;  many  graduates  are.  Yet  men  and 
women  do  become  well-educated;  often  they  explain 
the  fact  by  saying  that  they  learned  more  in  some 
experience  or  other  after  they  left  college  than  in  all 
the  classrooms  they  attended.  Their  explanation 
amounts  to  this — that  having  come  in  contact  with 
real  life  they  were  aware  from  time  to  time  of  a  need 
of  fresh  intellectual  equipment  for  their  work,  and 
they  were  fortunate  enough  to  find  what  they  needed, 
either  in  books  or  in  some  person  who  shared  the 
wisdom  with  them;  their  life,  therefore,  became  an 
alternation  of  study  and  practice — the  study  fitting 
them  to  proceed  with  their  career,  and  each  new 
experience  in  their  career  showing  them  more  clearly 
what  they  needed  to  study. 

We  may  find  the  illustration  in  ourselves.  The 
work  to  which  we  were  appointed  in  the  army  was 
for  the  most  part  predestined  by  the  preparation  we 
had  made  in  civil  life,  and  the  studies  which  we  now 
care  to  follow  are  in  many  cases  suggested  to  us  by 
what  we  did  in  the  war.  We  have  discovered  new 
needs,  we  say;  now  we  shall  study  to  supply  them. 
Yet  we  would  not  turn  to  a  university  for  help  if 
we  had  not  been  accustomed  to  some  sort  of  study, 
and  we  certainly  would  not  have  asked  for  the  par- 


98  DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS 

ticular  instruction  we  now  desire  had  not  our  recent 
experience  taught  us  something  about  ourselves.  If 
any  man  thinks  this  state  of  mind  temporary,  be 
longing  to  the  accidents  of  war,  we  hope  here  in  this 
university  to  make  such  a  state  of  mind  seem  the 
permanent  ideal  for  all  men  and  women.  We  hope 
that  our  experiment  here  may  spread  the  habit  of 
life-long  study  at  home.  Why  should  a  man  give  up 
the  good  custom  of  withdrawing  occasionally  from 
his  work  to  secure  the  training  which  that  very  work 
has  caused  him  to  desire?  The  foolishness  of  trying 
to  cram  for  life,  as  we  have  tried  in  our  educational 
system,  would  be  demonstrated,  even  if  we  had  no 
other  proof  of  it,  by  the  number  of  things  of  which 
we  had  no  immediate  need  when  we  left  school,  and 
which  have  rusted  in  our  memory  until  the  unlucky 
day  when  we  wished  to  use  them  and  found  them  out 
of  repair.  We  tried  to  learn  such  matters  at  the 
wrong  time  of  life;  we  studied  too  many  things  at 
once.  Geography,  for  example,  is  considered  still 
by  many  people  a  school  subject,  but  were  we  ever 
so  much  interested  in  studying  it  as  we  are  now? 
Whether  we  are  twenty  years  old  or  thirty  at  the 
moment,  why  should  we  not  study  geography  under 
the  best  instruction  as  soon  as  we  discover  the  im 
portance  of  it? 

Of  course  such  a  point  of  view,  could  we  make  it 
prevail  in  America,  would  force  us  to  change  much 
of  our  educational  machinery.  We  should  then  find 
it  an  impertinent  thing  to  impose  entrance  examina 
tions  upon  men  and  women  who  ask  simply  to  be 
taught.  We  are  rather  proud  that  we  have  no 
entrance  examinations  for  this  university.  There  is 
no  reason  why  any  person,  so  he  be  sane,  should  not 


SOCIETY  AS  A  UNIVERSITY  99 

have  access  freely  to  the  instruction  he  desires. 
Whether  the  candidate  can  profit  by  the  course  will 
in  many  cases  be  evident  enough  to  whoever  is  com 
petent  to  give  the  course ;  but  often  where  the  teacher 
would  expect  otherwise,  the  instruction  will  prove 
unexpectedly  valuable  for  the  student,  simply  be 
cause  his  experience  has  taught  him  a  need  which  he 
alone  best  understands.  The  place  for  examinations 
is  at  the  end  of  the  course.  Yet  even  in  the  giving 
of  degrees  and  certificates  there  is  some  folly  unless 
men  preserve  their  common  sense — unless  they  re 
member  that  what  a  man  knows  is  in  no  way  con 
ditioned  by  the  parchment,  however  sealed  and 
signed,  and  that  a  genuine  access  of  knowledge  will 
appear  sufficiently  and  inevitably  in  his  conduct,  in 
his  power  to  live  more  wisely,  more  unselfishly,  more 
happily. 

The  second  aspect  of  our  university  work  here, 
growing  out  of  the  conditions  of  the  moment  and  yet 
holding  a  prophecy  for  education  at  home,  is  that 
the  teaching  here  will  be  done  by  fellow-citizens — 
that  is,  the  faculty  will  be  drawn  from  officers  and 
men  who  yesterday  were  simply  comrades  in  arms. 
To  be  sure  they  are  asked  to  undertake  this  work  be 
cause  of  their  standing  as  educators  in  well-known 
schools  and  colleges,  but  we  prefer  to  think  of  them 
in  the  significance  just  suggested,  as  good  citizens 
sharing  with  their  fellows  the  advantage  they  hap 
pen  to  possess  in  intellectual  wealth.  Just  as 
we  have  thought  of  education  on  the  whole 
as  a  subdivision  of  life,  something  apart,  not 
vital,  so  we  think  of  teaching  too  exclusively 
as  a  special  profession.  Yet  if  the  business 
of  education  is  to  help  a  man  to  live,  if  the  best  edu- 


100  DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS 

cation  is  alternate  study  and  experience,  then  surely 
teaching  should  be  a  normal  function  for  any  gen 
erous  man  or  woman.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  world 
of  education,  far  from  being  an  unselfish  world,  as 
we  sometimes  permit  ourselves  to  think,  is  really  the 
very  citadel  of  selfishness.  A  few  teachers  indeed 
devote  their  lives  to  spreading  knowledge,  but  so 
ciety  as  a  whole  studies  only  for  its  own  purposes, 
and  the  individual  man  and  woman  feels  no  responsi 
bility  to  pass  on  to  their  fellows  their  share  of  light, 
as  precious  and  for  the  giver  as  simple  as  the  cup 
of  cold  water. 

We  content  ourselves  with  thinking  that  the  pub 
lic  schools  or  the  paid  teacher  at  the  university  can 
attend  to  education  for  us ;  we  need  not  worry  about 
it.  There  once  were  men  and  women,  in  days  long 
gone  by,  who  thought  the  ordinary  charity  of  life 
should  be  the  affair  of  specialists — of  the  monk,  the 
priest,  the  hermit.  We  now  understand  better  the 
obligation  upon  us  all  to  provide  clothing  and 
shelter  for  our  fellows  in  need.  The  most  selfish 
man  now  loses  a  little  sleep,  even  in  a  comfortable 
bed,  if  he  knows  a  beggar  is  couched  on  the  cold 
pavement  in  front  of  his  house.  But  this  is  the  only 
kind  of  charity  we  are  as  yet  deeply  interested  in, 
and  this  is  but  physical  charity.  We  are  not 
yet  quick  to  share  the  intellectual  bread  and  drink 
and  warmth  which  may  have  come  to  us  by  good 
fortune.  The  beggar  and  the  starving  man 
trouble  us ;  we  are  even  worried  over  the  poor  who 
do  not  realize  how  poor  they  are;  we  would  teach 
them  to  take  their  part  in  society.  But  we  are  not 
yet  greatly  troubled  by  ignorance  in  a  man,  though 
his  ignorance  may  bring  himself  and  his  family  to 


SOCIETY  AS  A  UNIVERSITY  101 

many  kinds  of  disaster — though  hi.s  ignorance-  may 
poison  us  with  disease,  or  with  what  is -as  dangerous, 
with  prejudice  and  the  beginnings  of  hate.  We  are 
little  disturbed  when  such  a  man  is  conscious  of  his 
ignorance  and  would  be  glad  to  learn ;  still  less  does 
it  cost  us  worry  if  he  is  quite  content  not  to  know. 
If  in  this  university  we  can  adopt  an  unselfish  atti 
tude  toward  those  fellow-citizens  who  wish  to  be 
taught  the  knowledge  in  which  we  are  richer  than 
they,  perhaps  we  may  take  home  with  us  a  new  ideal 
of  intellectual  service.  That  the  ideal  is  needed,  we 
can  illustrate  once  more  from  ourselves.  When  a 
young  man  asks,  "Have  you  such  or  such  a  course 
for  me?"  if  we  are  compelled  to  say,  "No,  this 
course  is  not  yet  ready, "  the  possible  student,  since 
he  cannot  get  the  particular  course  he  thought  he 
wanted,  will  turn  away  as  though  his  concern  with 
the  university  were  ended.  He  is  surprised  if  we 
suggest  to  him  that  since  he  is  so  far  advanced  in 
his  studies  as  to  outstrip  what  the  university  can 
offer,  he  should  himself  do  some  teaching  to  share 
his  knowledge  with  those  who  know  less. 

The  third  aspect  of  our  program  here  which  we 
hope  will  be  permanent  in  education  at  home,  is  the 
preparation  we  have  tried  to  make  to  teach  a  man 
what  he  needs.  This  preparation  might  seem  to  be 
inevitable  and  the  idea  of  it  so  obvious  that  it  should 
not  be  mentioned  at  all,  but  in  fact  very  few  schools 
and  colleges  in  the  United  States  are  organized  to 
meet  the  particular  and  immediate  demands  of  in 
dividuals.  When  you  apply  at  the  door  of  a  uni 
versity  for  instruction  in  a  particular  thing,  you 
find  that  the  university  expects  you  to  work  toward 
a  degree,  or  to  register  in  a  certain  school;  it  ex- 


102  DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS 

pools  to. label  you ;  you  must  be  a  candidate  for  some 
thing.  If  you  apply  at  a  high  school,  you  are 
grouped  for  convenience  of  administration  with  cer 
tain  others,  presumably  desiring  the  same  things  as 
yourself,  and  in  order  to  make  the  group  symmet 
rical  to  the  eye  of  the  administrator  you  and  the 
other  members  of  the  group  are  all  required  to  take 
a  few  courses  which  you  all  know  you  do  not  want. 
Even  here  in  the  peculiarly  free  university  which 
we  are  improvising  we  have  heard  the  question 
raised  of  a  student  who  takes  three  courses,  let  us 
say,  one  in  the  College  Business,  one  in  the  College 
of  Letters,  and  one  in  the  College  of  Art — to  what 
college  does  he  belong?  Of  course  he  belongs  to 
all  three,  or  rather,  to  none  of  them;  he  is  a  candi 
date,  if  you  choose,  for  knowledge,  and  he  is  chiefly 
interested  in  life.  The  record  ought  to  be  complete 
and  satisfying  even  to  the  statistician,  when  we 
know  which  courses  he  is  for  the  moment  following. 
Unfortunately,  however,  the  ideal  of  teaching  people 
just  what  they  need  at  the  moment  when  they  need 
it,  is  sometimes  stated  in  a  negative  way.  We  some 
times  hear  that  education  will  be  successful  when 
this  or  that  subject  shall  not  be  taught.  Yet  the 
absence  of  a  subject  will  not  of  itself  make  a  good 
curriculum.  There  is  danger  also  that  when  we  try 
to  give  people  just  what  they  need  we  may  give  them 
something  temporary  and  not  what  they  most  pro 
foundly  need ;  there  is  danger  that  we  may  not  pro 
vide  for  the  demands  of  the  day  after  to-morrow 
or  the  day  after  that,  when  the  students  shall  have 
outgrown  the  satisfied  need  of  to-day.  It  is  the  hope 
of  this  university,  not  only  to  supply  each  student 
with  such  instruction  as  his  present  condition  calls 


SOCIETY  AS  A  UNIVERSITY  103 

for,  but  to  teach  him  also  the  means  of  access  to  more 
knowledge  as  his  desire  for  the  knowledge  may 
grow. 


n 

What  the  needs  of  all  of  us  may  be,  we  discover 
'in  a  general  way  by  observing  the  experience  of  the 
world  and  of  the  men  immediately  about  us  in  these 
last  four  or  five  years.  Adult  education  we  have 
learned  to  look  upon  as  of  the  first  importance, 
since  the  war  has  taught  us  what  continuous  training 
is  necessary  to  keep  our  imagination  young  and  our 
attitude  toward  life  supple  and  adaptable.  It  is 
our  frailty  as  human  beings,  unless  we  watch  our 
selves  ceaselessly,  to  become  stiff  and  unbending  in 
a  world  that  changes  always.  Were  we  hot  radicals 
at  twenty-one?  We  shall  be  cool  and  conservative 
at  thirty,  unless  some  blessed  chance  or  some  excep 
tional  wisdom  keeps  us  adjusted  to  each  new  day. 
Momentum  counts  for  as  much  in  human  characters 
as  it  does  in  railway  trains.  It  hurts  us  to  stop  a 
habit  or  to  change  the  direction  of  it — most  of  all 
an  intellectual  habit.  When  some  such  catastrophe 
as  the  war  uproots  us,  forcing  us  to  alter  our  way 
of  life  and  our  ideas,  we  observe  that  our  neighbors 
fall  into  groups  according  as  they  are  quick  or  slow 
to  adapt  themselves  to  the  new  world,  or  according 
as  they  are  unable  to  adapt  themselves  at  all.  Some 
men  who  had  spent  their  lives  in  the  city  with  small 
opportunity  for  experience  out-of-doors,  found 
themselves  quickly  at  home  in  the  camp  and  in  the 
trench.  Others  seemed  unable  to  face  the  hard  fact 


104  DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS 

that  they  had  been  rooted  out  of  their  old  ways; 
they  sought  even  in  camp  and  trench  for  their  ac 
customed  environment.  Among  the  students  com 
ing  to  this  university — shall  I  admit  even  among  the 
teachers! — not  all  are  aware  of  what  should  be 
obvious,  that  this  university  is  unlike  other  uni 
versities,  that  it  has  not  the  same  equipment  in 
laboratories,  in  libraries,  in  dormitories,  and  cer 
tainly  not  the  same  wealth  of  tradition.  These  ex 
amples  illustrate  more  than  our  moment  or  this 
place ;  men  everywhere  and  at  all  times  are  slow  to 
change  their  mental  attitude.  It  is  no  great  wonder 
that  the  occasional  genius  whose  imagination  is 
alert  and  whose  spirit  is  supple  to  the  facts  just  as 
they  are,  and  just  as  they  change,  should  lead  his 
fellows.  Once  he  has  turned  them  in  a  certain  direc 
tion,  however,  it  is  no  wonder  that  he  should  some 
day  incur  their  dislike;  for  'he  will  continue  to 
change,  and  they  will  prefer  the  first  path  he  taught 
them. 

Whatever  consistence  of  ideals  we  may  strive 
for,  there  is  no  persistent  way  of  life,  outside  of 
growth  itself.  Last  year's  wisdom,  slavishly  con 
served,  produces  no  light  for  to-day.  The  best  coun 
try,  it  would  seem,  and  the  safest  is  that  in  which 
the  greatest  number  of  citizens  are  supple-minded. 
The  most  dangerous  country,  as  we  have  found  to 
our  cost,  is  that  in  which  the  intellectual  momentum 
is  strongest,  in  which  ideas  have  become  fixed  and 
organized.  To  itself  such  a  country  will  seem  sin 
cere.  Unfortunately  it  will  also  seem  to  itself  adapt 
able  and  supple.  But  only  by  training,  by  life-long 
education,  by  the  most  vigilant  self-examination,  can 
any  man  or  any  nation  remain  open-minded.  It  is 


SOCIETY  AS  A  UNIVERSITY  105 

the  irony  of  this  insidious  momentum  that  we  all 
think  ourselves  peculiarly  open  in  spirit,  and  wish 
that  the  foreigner  were  not  so  fond  of  his  tradition. 
We  pity  the  Hindu  in  the  fever  districts  who  is  re 
luctant  to  boil  the  drinking  water;  his  ancestors 
were  not  in  the  habit  of  boiling  it.  Poor  fool,  we 
think.  We  ourselves,  however,  are  not  likely  to 
adopt  the  metric  system.  Of  course  there  is  every 
reason  why  we  should  adopt  it,  except  the  Hindu 
reason  that  our  fathers  got  on  without  it.  We  are 
not  greatly  different,  we  highly  civilized  men,  from 
the  spiders  and  the  bees  and  the  other  small  crea 
tures  of  instinct  whom  we  study  sometimes  with  won 
der  and  sometimes  with  patronizing  self-satisfac 
tion,  noticing  that  what  they  do  has  been  suggested 
by  instinct  until  instinct  itself  has  become  habit. 
Man  has  been  tempted  in  some  phases  of  his  phi 
losophy  to  believe  that  his  instincts,  if  left  to  them 
selves,  would  prove  as  wise  as  seem  the  instincts  of 
the  bee  or  of  the  spider.  The  popular  theorists  of 
the  eighteenth  century  spread  the  hope  that  all  of 
us  might  be  perfect  if  our  natural  instincts  were  al 
lowed  to  develop  undisturbed,  and  that  such  an  un 
embarrassed  development  of  instinct  would  be  the 
best  education.  The  men  and  women  who  sought 
happiness  by  this  program  found  the  results  some 
what  disastrous. 

Other  philosophers  have  believed  that  though  not 
all  instincts  are  necessarily  good,  perhaps  the  good 
instincts  might  be  exclusively  developed  until  they 
should  become  habits,  and  goodness,  after  our  in 
stincts  were  once  selected,  might  be  automatic.  Yet 
even  though  such  a  program  of  education  were 
possible,  it  is  not  likely  that  the  sort  of  goodness 


106  DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS 

which  habitual  instincts  will  provide  would  answer 
the  demands  of  a  changing  world.  It  is  really  not 
enough  to  be  good.  One  must  be  intelligent  also 
and,  if  possible,  wise.  This  simple  truth  is  not 
often  realized  in  practice;  it  might  well  be  the 
chief  object  of  our  study  here.  The  noblest  con 
ception  of  life  is  not  that  which  would  make  good 
ness  automatic;  it  is  that  which  would  add  intelli 
gence  to  goodness,  which  by  study  would  cultivate 
suppleness  of  mind  and  keep  the  imagination  alert; 
it  is  that  which  in  this  world  of  shifting  problems 
would  keep  the  character  sound  and  the  mind  always 
on  guard. 

Once  more  we  might  illustrate  from  our  experi 
ence  here  in  setting  up  this  university.  We  have 
heard  some  complaints  from  students — let  us  admit 
again  from  teachers  also — that  we  lack  books,  that 
we  lack  tables  and  desks  and  chairs  and  office  room, 
that  we  lack  laboratories.  Once  more  we  are  crea 
tures  of  intellectual  momentum.  Our  chief  concern 
here,  as  it  ought  to  be  in  any  university,  is  to  learn 
something  about  life  itself,  about  society,  about 
citizenship;  is  it  true  that  men  who  have  gone 
through  the  experience  of  this  war  cannot  teach  each 
other  anything  important  about  life  unless  they  are 
furnished  with  textbooks?  The  answer  of  course 
will  be  that  we  are  here  to  study  other  things  than 
life — algebra,  for  example,  or  chemistry,  or  law,  and 
that  the  material  for  such  study  is  chiefly  stored  up 
in  books.  True;  but  education  has  for  a  long  time 
become  too  much  a  matter  of  textbooks.  We  can 
make  experiments  in  physics  only  if  the  proper  in 
struments  are  put  into  our  hands,  but  if  we  really 
understood  physics  we  could  make  the  instruments. 


SOCIETY  AS  A  UNIVERSITY  107 

We  have  studied  the  history  of  science  too  much  as 
we  have  studied  other  history,  in  a  book;  yet  to 
know  science  we  should  live  again  the  experience  of 
each  historic  genius,  we  should  invent  anew  the  ap 
paratus,  make  the  new  experiment,  and  arrive  at  the 
new  demonstration.  A  really  great  teacher  of  law 
will  teach  his  pupils  to  deduce  the  principles  from 
such  cases  as  normally  come  before  them.  Can  no 
legal  problems  be  found  except  those  stored  away 
in  textbooks?  Can  we  find  nothing  for  the  mind 
to  lay  hold  on  in  the  life  around  us?  Some  of  us 
suspect  that  the  consternation  we  feel  at  the  lack  of 
textbooks  or  other  physical  equipment  is  the  realiza 
tion  that  intellectual  momentum  has  carried  us  out 
of  touch  with  life ;  we  suspect  that  a  wise  man  would 
find  enough  things  to  study  and  to  teach  right  here 
in  the  daily  events  of  our  community.  But  it  may 
be  objected  again  that  the  great  poets,  the  great 
novelists,  and  the  great  historians  of  the  world  left 
us  masterpieces  which  cannot  be  improvised,  and 
which,  of  course,  cannot  be  studied  unless  they  are 
here  in  the  university  library.  Well,  they  are  here. 
But  if  they  were  not,  would  it  be  such  a  terrible  mis 
fortune  if  we  were  forced  to  express  ourselves  a 
little,  to  make  some  portrait  of  our  own  life,  to  be 
come  to  some  extent  ourselves  poets,  novelists  and 
historians?  Obviously  there  was  a  day  when  men, 
studying  their  own  lives,  did  write  their  own  books. 
Our  destiny  is  nobler  than  merely  to  ponder  what 
other  men  have  felt,  have  done,  and  have  said,  in 
stead  of  feeling  and  doing  and  saying  things  our 
selves  which  other  men  would  care  to  know.  In  the 
countryside  about  us  here,  in  the  town  of  Beaune,  in 
the  city  of  Dijon,  history  and  art  may  be  studied  to 


108  DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS 

whatever  extent  we  please.  But  it  is  in  the  end  less 
profitable  to  pass  hours  admiring  the  beauty  with 
which  men  long  dead  built  their  houses,  than  to 
work  ourselves  here  in  our  university  camp  to  make 
our  own  barracks  and  lecture  halls  beautiful.  Our 
opportunity  is  to  recover  our  intellectual  independ 
ence  in  a  world  of  too  many  books,  too  many  libra 
ries,  and  too  much  physical  equipment.  When  a  man 
is  once  independent  and  alert  to  the  life  about  him, 
all  these  things  are  precious  as  aids.  They  are,  how 
ever,  the  mere  baggage  and  incumbrance  of  educa 
tion  when  we  find  nothing  to  study  except  in  books, 
and  can  arrive  at  no  science  unless  the  laboratory 
is  made  for  us  by  somebody  else. 


in 

The  new  world  into  which  we  are  now  entering 
will  be,  it  seems,  a  world  of  experts.  However  we 
may  have  blundered  happily  through  life  before  now, 
no  man  can  reasonably  hope  for  success  or  happi 
ness  hereafter  unless  he  have  the  training  to  con 
tribute  his  share  to  the  society  in  which  he  moves. 
The  war,  more  than  any  other  experience  we  have 
passed  through,  has  proved  the  advantages  of  train 
ing.  It  has  also  proved  how  easily  skill  can  be  sup 
plied  where  men  desire  it.  Ships  have  been  built, 
guns  have  been  made,  troops  have  been  led  by  men 
whose  occupation  was  quite  different  until  they  an 
swered  the  call  of  the  moment,  but  in  each  case  they 
underwent  training  for  their  new  task,  and  their  suc 
cess  was  in  proportion  to  that  instruction.  We  begin 


SOCIETY  AS  A  UNIVERSITY  109 

to  see  that  in  the  improvised  armies  of  the  world  the 
undertrained  man  has  been  carried  as  a  dead  weight. 
We  begin  to  see  that  society  at  all  times  must  carry 
the  ignorant  as  so  much  handicap  for  the  educated. 
For  the  moment  I  speak  of  education  in  those  things 
which  help  us  to  earn  our  living.  No  man  about  us 
can  be  poor  without  making  us  poor  also;  for  we 
shall  have  to  give  him  alms  on  the  street,  or  if  we 
prefer  not  to  give  alms  that  way,  we  must  pay  taxes 
to  support  the  asylum  or  the  hospital,  or  we  must 
contribute  to  the  charitable  society  which  furnishes 
him  with  free  medicine  when  he  is  ill  or  with  shelter 
when  he  cannot  pay  his  rent.  Had  we  no  other  than 
selfish  motives,  we  should  still  be  obliged  by  every 
means  possible  to  cure  this  man  of  his  poverty — 
that  is,  to  supply  him  with  the  technical  training  and 
to  implant  in  him  if  we  can  the  necessary  energy  to 
support  himself. 

Just  how  shall  we  approach  this  problem?  Shall 
we  force  the  lazy  and  the  poor  to  work,  or  shall 
we  educate  them  to  such  a  point  of  view  that  they 
themselves  will  desire  further  training  and  will  feel 
ashamed  not  to  take  their  part  in  citizenship  ?  This 
question  will  press  upon  us  from  many  angles ;  shall 
society  protect  itself  by  physical  or  legal  force,  or 
shall  it  use  the  spiritual  force  of  education?  Upon 
our  answer  to  this  question  we  may  be  sure  the 
happiness  of  the  new  world  will  turn. 

But  the  question  of  training  is  not  limited  to  the 
economic  field.  Even  though  a  man  can  earn  his 
living,  even  though  he  flatter  himself  that  he  is  in 
no  way  a  burden  upon  society,  he  may  have  forgotten 
that  life  itself  is  an  art  or  science,  and  that  citizen 
ship  demands  more  than  mere  good-will.  In  the  new 


110  DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS 

world  we  shall  expect  men  and  women  to  be  trained, 
not  only  to  earn  their  living,  but,  much  more,  to  take 
their  part  in  the  state.  If  we  have  learned  nothing 
else  from  Germany,  that  country  of  superb  efficiency 
in  material  things,  we  ought  to  have  learned  from 
her  that  men  must  be  expert  in  citizenship  unless 
they  will  be  led  like  sheep,  and  that  a  nation  must  be 
expert  in  world  affairs  unless  they  will  give  their 
consent  to  the  committing  of  international  crimes. 
Without  expertness  in  the  citizenship  of  one's  nation 
and  in  the  larger  citizenship  of  the  world,  we  shall 
be  victims  of  that  intellectual  momentum  which 
everywhere  endangers  human  virtue  and  happiness. 
We  no  longer  explain  the  causes  of  war  with  the  bril 
liant  simplicity  of  Carlyle;  when  two  armies  face 
each  other,  and  when  we  ask  why  those  who  had 
no  personal  quarrel  with  each  other  are  now  pre 
paring  to  blow  each  other's  brains  out,  it  is  not 
enough  to  answer,  they  are  there  because  their  rulers 
had  a  quarrel  and  were  shrewd  enough  to  send  others 
to  fight  it  out ;  we  now  know  that  this  explanation  is 
insufficient.  But  just  what  is  the  cause  of  any  par 
ticular  war,  no  one  knows — at  least,  the  historians 
who  have  studied  the  causes  most  profoundly  usually 
disagree.  It  is  time  with  some  humility  to  study  the 
effects  of  international  manners — to  seek,  that  is, 
such  expertness  in  world  conduct  as  may  avoid 
setting  up  new  causes  for  war  even  in  the  attempt  to 
frame  a  lasting  peace. 

It  may  be  long  before  we  reach  world  expertness, 
but  in  each  nation  the  fields  are  quite  clear  which 
call  for  study.  We  must  know  all  that  can  be  known 
of  primitive  labor,  of  food  supply,  of  the  land;  we 
must  know  all  the  facts  available  about  machinery 


SOCIETY  AS  A  UNIVERSITY  Hi 

and  its  proper  use ;  we  must  know  the  utmost  of  the 
principles  which  govern  personal  relations — rela 
tions  to  other  men  as  individuals  and  relations  to  the 
state,  and  we  must  know  far  more  than  Americans 
in  general  have  yet  learned  of  that  world  of  art 
within  which  alone  a  nation  can  fully  express  its 
spirit. 

The  question  of  land  is  so  important  that  any 
citizen,  one  might  suppose,  would  be  ashamed 
not  to  be  expert  in  it.  Before  anything  else  we  must 
have  food;  yet  in  our  country,  as  in  other  modern 
states,  men  desert  the  farms  for  the  cities,  food  be 
comes  scarce  or  expensive,  the  country  becomes  the 
unproductive  playground  of  the  rich,  the  cities  be 
come  the  devouring  furnaces  in  which  the  poor  are 
burned  up.  These  tendencies  now  repeating  them 
selves  in  our  own  history  have  occurred  many  times 
before — in  ancient  Eome  and  in  societies  older  still. 
What  shall  be  done  about  it?  Food  must  be  raised, 
yet  we  cannot  force  men  back  to  the  soil  if  they  wish 
to  leave  it — cannot,  that  is,  unless  the  farmer's  life 
is  to  be  an  actual  slavery.  How  to  teach  men  the 
importance  of  life  on  the  soil,  and  how  to  make  that 
life  so  rich  in  rewards  that  men  will  be  content  to 
serve  in  it — that  is  our  economic  task.  But  in 
America  a  closer  contact  with  the  soil  is  needed  for 
intellectual  reasons.  Our  society  lacks  the  kind  of 
wisdom  most  easily  cultivated  among  men  who  work 
close  to  nature,  and  who  do  their  thinking  furthest 
removed  from  city  artifice  and  from  the  tyranny 
of  books.  The  country  in  which  we  find  ourselves  at 
this  moment,  France,  illustrates  what  is  called  peas 
ant  wisdom,  but  what  for  us  should  be  the  plain  com- 
monsense  of  citizenship.  Waiting  here  as  we  are 


DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS 

for  our  turn  to  go  home,  we  have  at  least  the  oppor 
tunity  to  watch  the  instinctive  behavior  of  a  great 
people  taking  up  again  the  ways  of  peace.  We  can 
at  the  same  moment  study  the  programs  of  ear 
nest  statesmen,  moving  as  they  must  in  a  world  of 
theory,  and  we  can  see  the  French  peasant  once  more 
happily  tilling  the  beloved  farm  with  mud-stains  on 
his  uniform,  stains  no  longer  of  the  trench  but  of 
that  soil  on  which  his  forefathers  worked.  Such  a 
man  asks  of  peace  the  simple  privilege  of  continuing 
his  happy  labor.  What  we  all  of  us  ask  of  peace  is 
the  opportunity  to  return  to  our  private  happiness. 
But  when  we  have  become  too  subtle  in  our  theories, 
we  may  have  lost  the  secret  of  that  simple  peace  we 
desire;  we  need  to  be  reminded  constantly  of  the 
peasant  point  of  view,  of  that  elemental  wisdom  of 
the  soil  without  which  no  nation  has  yet  been  great, 
and  without  which  not  the  most  optimistic  of  us  can 
expect  any  lasting  good  fortune  for  our  own  country. 
This  university  does  not  hope  to  impart  the  precise 
truth  in  answer  to  the  hard  questions  of  to-day,  for 
no  man  yet  has  found  the  answers.  But  we  can  re 
mind  ourselves  here,  and  find  the  illustrations 
around  us,  that  life  rests  primarily  on  very  simple 
facts,  that  quite  literally  it  rests  on  the  soil,  and  that 
our  thinking  should  begin  with  a  desire  to  keep 
close  to  earth,  to  make  life  on  the  land  rich  intel 
lectually,  profitable  for  the  man  who  lives  it,  in 
spiring  to  his  fellows. 

When  we  turn  from  the  farm  to  the  city,  we  face 
the  problem  of  machinery,  which  might  be  used  as 
the  metaphor  of  all  modern  difficulties.  We  have  not 
yet  found  the  right  relation  of  machinery  to  man's 
happiness.  Every  inventor  of  a  machine  has  no 


SOCIETY  AS  A  UNIVERSITY  113 

doubt  believed  that  his  invention  would  decrease 
the  labor  of  the  world  and  would  add  somewhat  to 
men's  leisure.  Yet  it  has  never  been  proved  that 
those  first  British  weavers  were  altogether  wrong 
who  wished  to  annihilate  the  power  looms.  Those 
machines  took  man  from  the  leisure  and  comfort  of 
his  home  into  the  noise  and  torture  of  the  factory. 
They  destroyed  the  artisan  and  substituted  the  ma 
chine-tender.  In  the  countries  most  progressive 
economically  they  discouraged  him  who  would  make 
a  complete  and  beautiful  thing,  who  would  make 
all  of  a  chair  or  a  table  or  a  watch.  By  subdividing 
labor  they  have  brought  up  a  generation  of  machine 
hands  who  see  but  parts  of  the  product  and  often 
have  not  even  a  thought  of  the  whole.  Leisure  haa 
not  been  increased  in  the  world.  The  personal  dig 
nity  of  the  laborer  is  constantly  less.  Joy  in  labor 
has  gone  out.  Man  is,  as  it  were,  caught  in  his  own 
machine.  We  all  realize  this  aspect  of  the  modern 
world,  even  though  we  may  think  there  is  something 
to  be  said  on  the  other  side.  What  we  usually  say  is 
that  machinery  is  now  with  us,  that  its  development 
is  inevitable,  that  we  can  only  ameliorate  the  dis 
advantages  of  it.  Yet  since  we  made  it  ourselves, 
the  thought  will  cross  our  mind  at  such  a  moment  as 
this,  when  the  world  is  taking  an  inventory  of  its 
handicaps  and  its  advantages,  that  what  a  man 
created  himself  he  ought  not  to  look  upon  as  fate. 
It  is  our  problem  to  regulate  the  machinery  of  the 
world  with  constant  thought  to  the  happiness  and 
the  dignity  of  the  individual,  so  that  even  to-day 
he  who  makes  things,  be  he  dramatist  or  cobbler, 
shall  have  the  full  joy  of  creating,  and  shall  keep 
his  full  dignity  as  a  man. 


DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS 

In  the  larger  sense  also  we  are  caught  in  the  ma 
chinery  of  institutions.  Once  more  the  momentum 
of  intellectual  habit  bids  us  fear  the  instrument  we 
ourselves  have  made.  Society  makes  us  do  this  and 
that,  we  say,  whereas  the  conventions  of  society  are 
of  our  contriving,  and  we  are  free  to  observe  them 
or  not  as  we  choose.  We  say  that  it  was  dangerous 
for  Germany  to  have  so  great  an  army,  because  with 
such  a  weapon  in  her  hand  the  nation  had  no  choice 
at  last  but  to  use  it.  Yet  there  is  the  same  danger 
precisely  from  all  other  organizations,  if  man  feebly 
lets  go  his  power  to  change  or  to  direct  or  to  stop  the 
machine  he  himself  set  in  motion.  What  we  are  in 
danger  of  doing,  if  the  lessons  of  history  mean  any 
thing,  is  to  suffer  under  our  own  institutions  until 
we  can  suffer  no  longer,  and  then  to  go  mad  and  in 
augurate  a  revolution — as  futile  an  approach  to  free 
dom  as  the  British  weavers  made  when  they  broke 
the  power  looms.  We  must  educate  ourselves  to  re 
tain  control  of  all  the  machinery  of  society,  with  the 
same  hope  for  society  that  we  cherish  for  the  man 
in  the  factory — that  none  of  us  may  lose  or  diminish 
the  dignity  that  belongs  to  a  human  being,  nor  the 
sacredness  of  his  own  personality. 

In  the  world  of  personal  relations  we  shall  have 
many  problems  which  might  well  be  discussed  in  this 
university.  Perhaps  they  are  too  numerous  to  men 
tion  here.  But  the  principle  upon  which  they  are  to 
be  decided  is  itself  a  question  of  the  first  order.  Shall 
we  force  people  to  be  good,  to  be  healthy  and  to  be 
happy  according  to  some  idea  we  may  have  of  good 
ness  or  health  or  happiness,  or  shall  we  submit  to 
them  frankly  in  the  most  general  education  all  the 


SOCIETY  AS  A  UNIVERSITY  115 

facts  that  science  gives  us  in  the  field  of  ethics,  of 
personal  conduct? 

Education,  let  us  remind  ourselves  again,  is  indeed 
a  kind  of  force,  for  once  a  man  has  felt  the  charm 
of  reason,  he  is  not  entirely  free  thereafter  to  make 
a  fool  of  himself ;  at  least  he  can  do  it  only  with  re 
gret.  But  the  cruder  kinds  of  force,  the  laws  which 
seek  to  make  man  good  by  removing  the  possibility 
of  being  bad — we  must  decide  sooner  or  later 
whether  such  laws  do  not  practically  educate  men 
to  be  feeble  of  will  and  incapable  of  any  choice. 
We  can  conceive  of  society  as  of  an  army  in  which 
every  citizen  obeys  the  state  only  because  he  ia 
driven  to  obedience.  We  can  conceive  of  society 
also  as  of  an  army  in  which  every  citizen  sub 
mits  to  the  same  discipline,  but  for  the  far  different 
reason  that  he  realizes  the  value  of  cooperation. 
These  societies  may  outwardly  look  the  same,  but 
the  state  of  man  in  them  is  worlds  apart.  Liberty  in 
both  societies  is  indeed  limited,  in  one  by  the  police, 
in  the  other  by  the  mind.  It  is  not  at  all  clear  at  this 
moment  that  our  own  country  is  in  the  way  of 
choosing  that  sort  of  discipline  which  reason  alone 
dictates.  We  as  citizens  in  our  moment  of  study  here 
may  reflect  upon  this  problem. 

Not  simply  because  we  are  here  in  France,  the 
country  of  art,  should  we  remind  ourselves  of  our 
own  poverty  of  expression.  Our  artistic  life  in  com 
parison  with  that  of  other  great  nations  is  indeed 
poor.  We  love  painting  and  architecture  and  music, 
but  except  for  some  of  us  who  have  studied  those 
things  in  Europe,  we  are  not  as  a  nation  far  ad 
vanced  in  art.  To  say  so  frankly  may  hurt  our  pride, 
but  it  is  necessary  to  recognize  the  fact  if  we  are 


116  DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS 

to  mend  it.  The  question  presses  home,  I  repeat, 
not  simply  because  we  are  here  in  France,  but  be 
cause  having  measured  ourselves  beside  other  na 
tions,  we  find  we  cannot  adequately  express  the 
ideas  and  the  ideals  we  know  we  possess.  We  are 
less  expert  in  social  manners,  in  letters,  in  the  other 
arts  than  men  of  whom  we  think,  much  as  we  respect 
them,  that  they  have  a  spiritual  life  not  deeper  than 
our  own.  If  that  is  indeed  our  conviction,  there  is 
no  choice  but  to  train  ourselves  at  once  in  the  ex 
pression  which  we  lack.  Yet  this  training  is  ad 
visable  for  deeper  reasons  than  the  mere  desire  to 
show  ourselves  in  ari  the  equals  of  other  people.  It 
is  a  fair  question  whether  a  man  ever  knows  any 
thing  until  he  can  express  what  he  knows.  Much 
American  knowledge,  we  have  come  to  suspect,  is 
not  knowledge  at  all,  but  a  half-guessed  thought  or 
feeling,  an  inadequate  information  about  something 
in  general.  The  preciseness  of  the^,  Frenchman,  the 
Englishman's  solid  grasp  of  fact,  are  not  the  pe 
culiar  gifts  of  some  one  climate  nor  the  inheritance 
of  a  particular  blood — they  are  the  results  of  train 
ing.  If  we  admire  such  abilities,  we  can  make  them 
our  own. 


rv 

This  university,  then,  though  it  may  have  a  short 
career  in  this  particular  place,  we  hope  will  con 
tinue  its  work  in  the  memory  of  all  who  come  here, 
and  in  lasting  influence  on  our  country 's  future.  We 
wish  it  to  stand  for  the  idea  of  national  training. 
If  society  must  use  any  force  in  self-protection,  let 


SOCIETY  AS  A  UNIVERSITY  117 

us  organize  the  intelligence  of  men,  let  us  educate 
them.  Let  us  make  our  fellows  expert.  We  hope 
for  fewer  wars,  but  we  have  no  wild  dream  that  men 
will  suddenly  become  unselfish  or  automatically  wise. 
If  wars  are  ever  to  cease  it  will  be  because  society 
has  learned  how  to  avoid  the  causes  of  war.  To  this 
good  end  each  one  of  us  must  see  that  our  country 
takes  its  part  by  organizing  what  might  be  called 
a  national  army  against  ignorance,  by  taking  arms 
against  the  prime  cause  of  disease,  of  poverty,  of 
crime,  and  of  those  strong  prejudices  which  in  times 
past  have  led  men  to  hate  each  other. 


UNIVERSAL'  TRAINING  FOR  NATIONAL 
SERVICE 


No  problem  now  before  the  United  States  is  more 
important  than  the  question  of  national  education. 
Even  while  we  were  preparing  for  war  we  had  oc 
casion  to  feel  some  alarm  at  certain  weaknesses  in 
our  educational  system  revealed  by  those  prepara 
tions.  At  the  same  time  so  amazed  were  we  at  the 
resourcefulness  of  the  nation  in  times  of  stress,  that 
we  asked  why  our  great  reserves  of  character  and 
of  skill  should  not  be  mobilized  more  completely  in 
times  of  peace  for  the  constant  good  of  the  country. 
Now  that  the  war  is  past  we  find  ourselves  facing 
the  special  problem  of  training  for  national  defense. 
Some  kind  of  army  we  must  have,  large  or  small, 
and  some  kind  of  training.  Shall  we  give  this  train 
ing  only  to  a  group  of  professional  soldiers?  Shall 
this  training  look  only  to  the  contingencies  of  war? 

Some  of  us  who  have  been  working  with  our  fel 
low  citizens  on  foreign  soil,  and  from  that  distance 
have  been  looking  back  toward  our  country,  study 
ing  it  with  increased  affection  and  perhaps  also  with 
increased  concern,  earnestly  hope  that  the  people  at 

118 


UNIVERSAL  TRAINING  119 

home  will  compel  training  for  national  defense,  and 
that  they  will  interpret  national  defense  in  a  larger 
way  than  any  nation  has  yet  thought  of.  We  have 
.in  mind  of  course  the  total  needs  of  American  educa 
tion — the  need  of  more  and  better  schools,  the  need 
of  large  revisions  in  college  and  university  cur 
ricula,  the  need  of  a  strong  national  department  of 
education.  For  the  moment,  however,  we  have  in 
mind  particularly  the  defects  of  education  observed 
in  the  United  States  Army  in  France,  and  also 
what  the  educational  program  in  the  American  Ex 
peditionary  Force  has  done  to  remedy  those  defects ; 
and  since  we  are  convinced  that  the  time  has  come 
for  all  progressive  nations  to  organize  for  peace  as 
well  as  for  war,  conceiving  of  national  defense  as 
preparation  for  both  peace  and  war,  we  would  ad 
dress  ourselves  for  the  moment  to  the  specific  prob 
lem  of  national  training. 

The  principles  according  to  which  we  would 
envisage  such  national  training  are  five.  In  the 
first  place,  the  idea  of  universal  service  should  Be 
expanded  to  include  training  for  all  other  duties  of 
citizenship  besides  military,  and  to  include  training 
of  all  prospective  citizens,  even  of  those  physically 
unfit  for  military  service.  In  the  second  place,  the 
present  temporary  cantonments  in  the  United 
States,  or  equivalent  cantonments,  should  be  con 
verted  at  once  into  permanent  training  schools  for 
citizenship.  In  the  third  place,  a  permanent  educa 
tional  corps  should  be  added  to  the  army;  this  corps 
should  be  formed  of  experts  in  school,  in  vocational, 
and  in  the  more  elementary  college  subjects;  from 
time  to  time  competent  officers  in  other  branches 
of  army  service  should  be  assigned  to  this  corps. 


120  DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS 

In  the  fourth  place,  there  should  be  a  compulsory 
training  period  of  twelve  months  with  the  colors, 
from  September  first  to  September  first  or  from 
June  first  to  June  first,  or  between  any  other  dates 
which  should  be  found  practical — care  being  taken 
simply  to  fit  this  period  into  other  educational  or 
vocational  obligations.  This  training  should  be  be 
gun  between  the  ages  approximately  of  eighteen  or 
twenty,  perhaps  a  little  earlier  or  a  little  later,  as 
experience  might  prove  advisable.  Approximately 
one-half  of  this  training  should  be  for  military 
science  and  for  physical  development,  the  other  half 
for  training  under  military  discipline  in  school,  in 
vocational,  or  in  college  subjects.  In  the  fifth  place, 
the  citizen  in  training  should  be  free  to  elect  the 
kin  1  of  civil  education  he  receives,  with  the  ex 
ception  that  training  in  elementary  subjects  should 
be  compulsory  for  illiterates  and  for  the  foreign- 
born. 


n 

The  mobilization  of  the  American  Army  demon 
strated  that  an  astounding  number  of  native-born 
citizens  are  illiterate,  and  that  of  our  foreign-born 
citizens  a  still  larger  number  cannot  read  or  write 
the  English  language,  and  in  some  cases  cannot 
understand  it.  The  mobilization  demonstrated  also 
that  an  appalling  number  of  our  young  men  are  not 
in  proper  physical  condition.  It  is  unlikely  that  any 
economic  or  social  pressure  will  tend  to  remedy 
these  evils.  The  illiterate  citizen  can  make  a  living 


UNIVERSAL  TRAINING 

of  a  sort  more  or  less  satisfactory  to  himself,  and 
the  foreign-born  can  associate  with  others  of  his 
origin,  and  both  classes  can  avoid  that  social  criti 
cism  which  would  urge  them  toward  complete  citizen 
ship.  In  fact,  economic  and  social  pressure  tends 
actually  to  segregate  in  our  country  the  illiterate  ele 
ments  and  the  various  groups  of  foreign-born,  and 
unless  some  strenuous  effort  is  made  to  weld  all  these 
groups  into  one,  there  is  no  likelihood  of  change  in 
these  unfortunate  conditions.  The  program  of  edu 
cation  in  the  A.  E.  F.  demonstrated,  on  the  other 
hand,  that  even  brief  courses  of  study  followed  in 
tensively  under  military  discipline  are  adequate  to 
correct  illiteracy  and  to  teach  our  language.  The 
whole  experience  of  our  army  demonstrates  further 
that  if  brought  together  in  a  common  purpose,  the 
various  elements  of  our  population  can  be  speedily 
made  into  one  nation.  We  should  now  find  a  means 
to  provide  these  benefits  for  our  country  in  time  of 
peace. 

Even  those  soldiers  who  were  neither  illiterate  nor 
unable  to  command  the  English  language  showed  to 
a  distressing  degree  the  inefficiency  of  our  popular 
education.  The  men  waiting  to  return  to  the  United 
States  were  pathetically  eager  to  master  some  trade 
or  some  profession  in  order  to  be  sure  of  a  worthy 
place  in  the  society  to  which  they  were  returning. 
Far  more  than  one-half  of  the  A.  E.  F.  were  with 
out  adequate  training  for  any  trade  or  profession, 
and  perhaps  because  of  the  intellectual  stimulus  of 
their  experiences  in  the  war  the  men  themselves  were 
uncomfortably  aware  of  their  lack.  It  is  disturbing 
to  think  that  they  may  miss  their  proper  place  in 
their  generation.  It  is  more  disturbing  to  reflect, 


DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS 

however,  that  even  had  they  not  gone  to  Europe  in 
the  army,  they  would  still  have  been  without  train 
ing  for  professions  or  trades;  in  fact,  through  the 
army  educational  program  many  of  them  accident 
ally  received  such  training  and  preparation  for 
citizenship  as  is  provided  nowhere  in  the  United 
States  for  any  large  group  of  men.  It  seems  folly 
not  to  make  permanent  in  our  national  life  for  all 
citizens  the  advantages  which  the  soldiers  in  France 
temporarily  enjoyed. 

The  mobilization  of  our  army  showed,  on  the  other 
hand,  how  rich  potentially  the  manhood  of  our  na 
tion  is,  and  how  quickly  it  responds  to  the  regular 
life  and  the  scientific  care  which  even  a  hurried  prep 
aration  for  war  supplied.  The  soldiers  in  general 
enjoyed  such  health  as  is  the  rule  in  no  other  com 
munity.  The  total  discipline  of  their  life — regular 
hours,  rational  diet  and  decorum  of  conduct — 
brought  out  their  best  physical  and  moral  traits,  so 
that  to  look  at  the  average  group  of  American  sol 
diers  was  a  satisfaction ;  and  this  condition  of  health 
and  good  living  quickened  to  the  full  their  intel 
lectual  capacities,  so  that  those  who  taught  them  in 
all  subjects,  from  the  most  elementary  to  the  most 
advanced,  wondered  at  their  eagerness  and  their 
ability  to  learn.  Furthermore,  the  life  in  the  army 
developed  in  our  youth  a  sense  of  social  cooperation 
which  some  of  us  had  feared  was  lacking  in  the 
'American  character.  No  body  of  men  in  our  coun 
try  seems  now  more  eager  to  study  and  to  deal  in 
telligently  with  the  social  problems  which  confront 
us  than  the  men  of  the  army,  who  have  been  learning 
in  a  kind  of  laboratory  course  what  responsibility 
man  owes  to  his  fellow.  The  fact  that  in  the  army 


UNIVERSAL  TRAINING 

they  met  other  Americans  from  all  parts  of  the  coun 
try,  developed  a  new  sense  of  nationality;  and  the 
meeting  in  the  same  ranks  of  rich  and  poor,  de 
veloped  a  new  sense  of  democracy.  These  advan 
tages  of  health  and  morals,  of  intellectual  awaken 
ing,  of  patriotism  and  of  democratic  sympathy,  we 
desire  to  provide  for  each  generation  in  our  country, 
as  much  for  those  who  are  never  called  into  battle 
as  for  those  who  in  time  of  need  answer  the  call.  It 
is  the  logic  of  our  course  in  this  war  that  our  army, 
organized  to  defend  the  ideals  of  civilization,  at  the 
end  proved  itself  to  be  a  vast  university  of  citizen 
ship.  It  would  be  the  most  profitable  result  of  the 
war  for  our  country  and  for  the  world,  should  this 
university  in  citizenship  become  permanent  for  all 
our  people. 

This  training  should  be  provided  for  all  men  not 
mentally  defective.  Even  those  who  are  physically 
unfit  for  military  service  can  derive  great  benefit 
from  such  bodily  training  as  is  suited  to  their  needs, 
and  quite  as  much  as  other  men  they  can  derive 
benefits  from  training  in  the  non-military  duties  of 
citizenship.  Much  of  the  disruptive  thinking  in  so 
ciety  is  done  by  men  physically  handicapped,  whose 
point  of  view  toward  their  fellows  is  warped  or  em 
bittered  by  their  own  misfortunes.  In  many  cases 
their  philosophy  of  life  would  be  made  more  gen 
erous  by  an  improvement  in  their  health,  and  in  all 
cases  society  owes  it  to  them  to  provide  even  more 
adequate  advantages  than  for  those  who  start  life 
without  handicap.  Association  with  their  fellow 
citizens  in  a  national  system  of  training  would  prob 
ably  develop  in  these  men  at  least  a  greater  sense  of 
unity  with  the  nation  and  an  increase  of  pride  in 


DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS 

what  they  themselves  could  contribute  to  society  as 
a  whole.  In  a  very  large  number  of  cases  the  physi- 
cal  defects  which  now  weaken  the  youth  of  our  coun 
try  can  easily  be  corrected,  but  like  illiteracy  they 
can  be  corrected  only  if  society  insists  on  bringing 
the  individuals  under  the  proper  course  of  train 
ing. 

The  advantage  of  converting  the  present  training 
cantonments  or  equivalent  cantonments  into  perma 
nent  training  schools  is  obvious.  In  our  country 
much  sentiment  attaches  to  places  of  education,  and 
if  we  are  to  instal  in  our  national  life  a  vast  system 
of  training  in  citizenship,  it  is  in  our  temper  to  make 
of  those  places  where  this  citizenship  is  taught, 
shrines  as  it  were  of  affection.  If  men  look  back 
with  reverence  to  their  college  campus  or  to  the 
school  in  which  they  first  had  some  glimpse  of  the 
possibilities  of  life,  there  is  reason  why  these  larger 
schools  should  be  far  more  deeply  revered  in  which 
men  from  whole  sections  of  the  country  would  be 
brought  together  for  training  in  the  total  defense 
of  their  homes — in  the  defense  of  their  country 
against  possible  enemies  on  sea  or  land,  and  in  its 
defense  against  disease,  ignorance  and  incompe- 
tency. 

In  these  permanent  schools  much  of  the  material 
now  used  only  for  purposes  of  war  could  be  used 
constantly  for  purposes  of  peace.  The  materials 
which  in  times  of  war  must  be  gathered  hurriedly, 
instruments  for  engineering,  for  chemical  research, 
for  hospital  and  sanitary  service,  would  be  main 
tained  at  the  highest  point  of  excellence  in  the 
laboratories  of  these  schools.  At  the  American 
E.  F.  University  at  Beaune  the  laboratories  in 


UNIVERSAL  TRAINING  125 

chemistry,  physics,  bacteriology,  medicine,  biology, 
engineering,  fine  arts  and  music,  were  supplied 
largely  out  of  the  resources  of  the  army.  On  the 
return  of  the  army  to  the  United  States  it  would 
have  been  in  the  highest  degree  desirable  if  these 
laboratories  could  have  continued  to  serve  educa 
tional  purposes,  and  other  laboratories  also  on  a 
much  larger  scale,  which  would  then  have  been  avail 
able  at  short  notice  for  any  emergency  of  national 
defense. 

If  it  is  desirable  to  maintain  for  permanent  uses 
the  material  instruments  which  our  army  tempo 
rarily  collects  for  war,  it  is  still  more  desirable  to 
retain  for  the  advantage  of  our  country  in  times  of 
peace  the  educational  resources  which  the  army  must 
also  improvise  for  war.  A  large  part  of  the  duty  of 
the  modern  army  involves  scholarship  of  a  high 
order,  knowledge  of  languages,  of  history,  of  inter 
national  politics  and  of  course  of  the  sciences.  A 
nation  which  trains  for  all  duties  of  citizenship,  civil 
as  well  as  military,  will  find  it  advantageous  to 
develop  in  peace  times  the  same  scholarship  in  the 
same  things. 

To  conduct  such  schools  as  are  described  above, 
experts  would  be  needed  for  the  teaching  of  all  ele 
mentary  and  secondary  school  subjects,  for  the 
teaching  of  trades  and  vocations,  and  for  the  teach 
ing  of  such  subjects  of  college  or  university  grade 
as  the  youth  in  training  would  be  studying  at  the 
time.  In  addition  to  the  experts  who  would  form 
the  nucleus  of  this  educational  corps,  teachers  should 
be  recruited  from  officers  in  other  branches  of  army 
service,  who  from  time  to  time  would  thus  have  an 
opportunity  to  expand  their  own  scholarship,  and  to 


126  DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS 

make  a  direct  contribution  to  the  intellectual  and 
social  life  of  the  country.  Hitherto  it  has  been  only 
by  accident  that  armies  have  been  permitted  to  do 
constructive  social  work;  after  a  war  with  Cuba,  for 
example,  the  army  surgeon  is  permitted  to  clean  up 
a  fever  district.  There  is  no  reason  why  the  train 
ing  of  engineers,  of  surgeons,  of  officers  in  every 
branch  of  the  service,  should  not  at  all  times  be  put 
at  the  disposal  of  the  country. 

It  will  be  noted  that  in  the  period  of  training  the 
proportion  of  non-military  education  is  approxi 
mately  equivalent  to  the  amount  of  time  devoted  to 
study  yearly  in  the  average  high  school  or  college. 
The  time  therefore  spent  in  national  training  would 
not  be  in  addition  to  the  years  required  for  higher 
education.  The  period  of  training  should  be  so 
situated  between  high  school  and  college  that  those 
young  men,  the  comparatively  few  of  our  country, 
who  enjoy  a  college  education,  could  during  the  year 
of  service  cover  the  ground  of  their  Freshman  work, 
and  could  also  learn  habits  of  application  and  of 
study  at  the  moment  when  they  most  need  to  learn 
them.  In  fact,  it  is  not  improbable  that  the  months 
spent  in  the  unusually  favorable  conditions  of  regu 
lar  hours  and  good  health  would  save  time  for  the 
average  student.  No  one  familiar  with  college  life 
is  blind  to  the  fact  that  college  students  ordinarily 
waste  the  greater  part  of  their  time;  this  is  true 
even  if  one  admit  that  an  important  benefit  of  col 
lege  life  is  the  social  contact  established  with  other 
men  of  one's  age.  It  is  not  so  generally  realized 
that  the  average  college  student  is  extremely  care 
less  in  his  diet,  and  on  the  whole  is  far  below  the 


UNIVERSAL  TRAINING  13T-' 

physical  state  in  which  at  his  age  he  should  be.  It 
has  been  the  hope  of  college  athletics  to  correct  this 
deplorable  condition,  but  in  this  hope  college 
athletics  have  been  disappointing.  Army  life,  hpw- 
ever,  as  this  war  has  demonstrated,  provides  for 
every  soldier  a  finer  system  of  training  than  athletes 
usually  submit  themselves  to  in  times  of  peace.  A 
student  in  perfect  health  will  waste  less  time  in  idle 
ness  and  will  make  greater  progress  when  he  does 
study  than  the  average  college  boy  as  we  have  known 
him  in  the  United  States. 

Obviously  we  must  teach  the  illiterate  to  read  and 
write,  and  we  must  teach  the  foreign-born  to  use  our 
language.  Aside  from  this  obligation,  however,  an 
essential  feature  of  national  training  should  be  the 
complete  liberty  of  the  man  trained  to  select  his 
studies.  The  nation  should  undertake  during  this 
year  of  training  to  advance  him  as  far  as  possible 
in  any  course  of  study  which  he  desires  and  is 
equipped  to  follow.  If  he  looks  forward  to  busi 
ness,  to  agriculture,  to  industry,  then  his  training 
should  help  him  toward  that  career.  If  he  expects 
to  attend  college,  the  training  should  take  the  place 
of  his  Freshman  year.  If  he  desires  to  study  art, 
his  training  should  be  in  art.  Experience  with  the 
educational  program  in  the  A.  E.  F.  demonstrates* 
the  almost  unthought-of  potentialities  in  the  Ameri 
can  character.  Our  soldiers  apparently  have  as 
great  native  endowments  in  the  arts  as  the  most 
favored  of  the  Latin  races,  and  a  system  of  national 
training  which  should  try  to  develop  all  the  latent 
powers  of  the  individual  would  shortly  transform 
our  national  life.  Perhaps  the  temptation  of  any 


128  DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS 

such  system  as  we  are  here  suggesting  would  be 
to  prescribe  for  the  youth  of  the  nation  what  it 
should  study.  This  temptation  must  be  absolutely 
avoided.  To  yield  to  it  would  be  to  overwhelm  the 
whole  country  in  that  form  of  intellectual  Prussian- 
ism  which  now  fortunately  is  found  only  in  the  con 
servative  catalogues  of  some  of  our  universities — 
those  which  persist  in  prescribing  subjects  which 
have  become  dead,  or  in  teaching  vital  subjects  as 
though  they  were  dead.  Beyond  this  suggested  sys 
tem  of  national  training,  the  universities  should  still 
pursue  their  work  of  teaching  and  research,  func 
tioning  according  to  their  special  facilities.  But  the 
nation  should  undertake  to  make  an  inventory  of  its 
citizenship  in  each  generation,  and  to  advance  every 
man  as  far  as  possible  toward  the  work  to  which  he 
feels  called. 


ra 

Such  a  system  of  training  as  is  here  suggested 
would  be  very  expensive.  The  items  of  expense 
would  be  the  buildings  and  their  up-keep,  their 
equipment,  the  teachers  who  would  form  the  frame 
work  of  the  educational  corps,  and  the  cost  of  pro 
viding  subsistence  for  the  men  in  training.  All 
these  expenses,  however,  should  be  charged  frankly 
to  national  education,  and  the  nation  should  realize 
that  in  one  form  or  another  this  expense  is  unavoid 
able.  We  may  refuse  to  combat  illiteracy  and  dis 
ease,  we  may  refuse  to  assume  responsibility  for 
the  making  of  the  foreign  elements  in  the  United 


UNIVERSAL  TRAINING  129 

States  into  a  unified  nation ;  but  in  that  case  we  shall 
pay  for  the  support  of  poor  houses,  of  hospitals,  of 
jails  and  of  police,  and  we  shall  pay  even  more 
heavily  in  loss  of  national  health  and  efficiency.  If 
we  are  to  check  the  ignorance,  the  disease  and  the 
discontent  which  in  various  ways  menace  our  so 
ciety,  we  must  be  ready  to  pay  as  much  for  education 
as  we  are  now  prepared  to  invest  in  international 
canals  or  in  emergency  war  bills. 

It  is  a  tendency  of  our  country  to  disguise  the  cost 
of  education.  We  remit  taxes  on  educational  build 
ings  and  on  land  devoted  to  educational  purposes, 
and  in  our  bookkeeping  we  distribute  the  cost  of 
tuition.  Yet  even  when  the  whole  account  is  shown, 
it  does  not  appear  that  we  give  generously  to  educa 
tion,  though  as  a  nation  we  have  enjoyed  the  reputa 
tion  of  great  generosity  in  this  field.  Until  we  are 
ready  to  pay  for  popular  education,  we  are  not 
likely  to  achieve  even  approximately  those  minimum 
results  which  we  sometimes  try  to  make  ourselves 
believe  we  are  reaching.  In  order  to  give  even  one 
year  of  sound  training  to  every  young  man  in  our 
country,  it  will  be  necessary  to  assume  the  cost  as  a 
national  expense.  There  should  of  course  be  some 
financial  return  to  the  country  in  the  greater  effi 
ciency  of  our  citizens  and  in  the  decrease  of  dis 
ease  and  of  irresponsibility.  But  whether  or  not 
such  a  result  does  follow,  the  nation  should  be  asked 
now  to  face  the  internal  peril  of  illiteracy  and  of 
ignorance  as  frankly  and  as  generously  as  it  faced 
the  menace  of  an  enemy  from  abroad. 


130  DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS 


IV 

A  system  of  training  so  organized  would  have 
obvious  advantages.  In  a  general  way  each  train 
ing  camp  would  tend  to  become  an  educational  cen 
ter.  More  specifically,  the  annual  inventory  of  our 
educational  shortcomings  would  point  out  for  our 
school  system  the  task  to  which  it  should  address 
itself.  Undoubtedly  the  result  would  be  that  year 
by  year  the  schools  would  send  to  the  training  camps 
generations  better  prepared ;  by  keeping  the  election 
of  the  courses  in  the  training  camps  entirely  free, 
we  should  be  able  to  assist  each  student  to  make 
progress  from  the  point  at  which  his  education  had 
left  off,  and  the  gradual  rise  of  standard  in  the 
courses  in  this  year  of  training  would  be  the 
barometer  of  the  intellectual  progress  of  the  nation. 
The  year  of  training  would  also  show  which  parts  of 
the  country  were  providing  inadequate  facilities  for 
education,  and  means  could  be  taken  by  the  national 
government  to  improve  the  elementary  schools  in 
those  districts.  It  is  not  unlikely  that  as  a  result  of 
this  national  training  and  of  the  statistics  which  it 
would  make  available,  the  nation  would  soon  be 
persuaded,  as  it  should  have  been  persuaded  long 
ago,  to  establish  in  the  federal  government  a  strong 
department  of  education,  and  that  department  would 
collaborate  with  the  army  in  training  for  citizen 
ship. 

But  the  most  direct  advantage  would  be  for  the 
large  majority  of  our  young  men  who  at  present  re 
ceive  no  high  school  training  at  all,  nor  even  much 


UNIVERSAL  TRAINING  131 

elementary  education.  To  insure  for  them  a  rea 
sonable  start  in  life  would  be  worth  any  cost  and 
any  effort.  In  no  other  way  than  by  national  train 
ing  undertaken  as  a  national  expense  can  this  vast 
body  of  each  generation  be  sought  out  in  the  small 
town,  on  the  farm,  in  the  overcrowded  city,  and  can 
be  taught  the  things  essential  to  each  individual 
case.  To  care  for  this  neglected  majority  would  be 
really  to  train  our  nation. 

Perhaps  the  by-product  of  such  a  system  of  train 
ing  as  is  here  outlined  would  be  the  bringing  of  the 
army  into  a  sane  relation  with  society.  Through 
the  fear  of  militarism  which  possesses  the  modern 
world,  it  has  become  our  custom  to  support  the  army 
and  to  admire  military  science  only  in  moments  of 
extreme  need.  As  a  result,  the  soldier  in  war  time 
receives  an  adulation  perhaps  exaggerated,  and  in 
peace  times  he  is  neglected,  feared,  certainly  put  to 
no  good  use.  At  this  moment  when  our  army  thinks 
of  returning,  it  is  interesting  to  consider  that  every 
man  in  it  hopes  to  go  back  to  some  constructive  work 
for  his  country,  except  the  professional  soldier.  He 
can  look  forward  only  to  inactivity  until  the  spas 
modic  need  of  him  arises  again.  Perhaps  society  is 
wise  in  fearing  the  army  which  has  nothing  to  do; 
it  has  been  stupid,  however,  in  finding  no  use  for 
the  army  in  time  of  peace.  If  we  could  add  to  the 
military  functions  of  our  army  this  constructive  kind 
of  national  defense,  we  should  be  providing  a  noble 
and  honored  career  for  the  man  on  whom  in  extreme 
moments  the  life  of  the  nation  depends.  We  should 
be  bringing  the  soldier  into  constant  relation  with 
the  social  needs  of  the  country  he  serves,  and  we 
should  be  teaching  every  youth  within  our  borders 


132  DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS 

that  broad  conception  of  citizenship  expressed  for 
the  Anglo-Saxon  race  by  John  Milton, ' 1 1  call  a  com 
plete  and  generous  education  that  which  fits  a  man 
to  perform  justly,  skillfully,  and  magnanimously,  all 
the  offices  both  private  and  public,  of  peace  and 
war." 


VI 
UNIVEBSITY  LEADERSHIP 


IN  this  moment  of  recovery,  when  It  would  be  a 
satisfaction  to  name  some  positive  fruit  of  the  war, 
not  merely  the  checking  of  a  foe  but  some  advance  in 
the  condition  of  mankind,  we  like  to  believe  that  the 
war  has  indicated  anew  the  power  of  the  mind  if 
rightly  trained,  and  consequently  the  importance  of 
education.  Even  in  the  midst  of  what  seemed  a  trial 
by  force,  the  play  of  mind  was  imposing  and  decisive. 
No  wonder  if  the  armies  in  the  field  began  to  cherish 
that  oldest  of  deferred  hopes,  the  vision  of  a  world 
made  orderly  by  intelligence.  The  war  forced  us  all 
to  think  a  little ;  it  suggested  at  last  what  might  hap 
pen  if  we  all  thought  a  great  deal. 

Other  wars  before  now  have  inspired  this  vision 
in  other  men,  but  hitherto,  as  I  said,  the  hope  has 
been  deferred.  It  is  not  easy  to  be  thoughtful  or 
intelligent,  and  human  beings  will  not  use  the  mind 
they  have,  much  less  train  it,  unless  a  strong  motive 
compels  them.  Such  a  motive  has  been  supplied  by 
a  state  of  war  but  never  hitherto  by  conditions  of 
peace.  When  the  nation  is  in  great  peril  we  will 
make  sacrifices — that  is,  we  will  use  our  minds,  we 
will  cooperate  intelligently  with  our  neighbors,  we 

133 


134  DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS 

will  improve  ourselves ;  when  peace  comes,  however, 
we  relax  these  and  other  forms  of  discipline.  It  is 
not  a  moral  substitute  for  war  that  we  need ;  for  war 
there  can  be  no  substitute,  as  there  can  be  none  for 
peace.  But  we  need  a  motive  to  become  civilized,  a 
motive  to  use  our  intelligence  in  the  blessed  years  of 
tranquillity,  a  motive  at  least  as  strong  as  those 
which  in  the  time  of  danger  urge  us  toward  good 
sense,  imagination,  and  sympathy.  Until  we  have 
discovered  such  a  motive,  we  must  not  expect  as  the 
fruit  of  the  war  just  over  any  final  installation  of 
reason  in  the  affairs  of  men. 

But  we  may  note  how  near  we  came  during  this 
war  to  a  permanent  reliance  upon  intelligence,  and 
we  will  retard  so  far  as  we  can  the  failing  of  that 
reliance,  if  fail  it  must.  It  is  something  that  for  a 
time  at  least  men  in  large  numbers  became  aware  of 
the  mind,  and  a  few  of  us  dare  believe  that  if  the 
schools  and  universities  put  themselves  at  the  ser 
vice  of  this  temporary  regard  for  the  intellect,  there 
need  be  no  relapse  but  continued  progress.  We  base 
our  hope  on  what  we  saw  in  the  armies  abroad.  The 
power  of  the  mind  was  revealed  to  the  soldier  in  his 
own  resistance  to  privation,  to  suffering  and  to  mo 
notony,  in  his  ability  to  rise  above  evil  conditions 
and  to  remain  above  them.  The  life  of  civilized 
man,  we  say,  is  the  life  of  the  spirit.  In  the  trenches 
men  lived  in  the  spirit  or  not  at  all.  The  rest,  the 
warmth  and  the  food  usually  found  in  the  material 
world,  were  for  the  time  transferred  to  the  world 
of  ideas,  and  were  there  studied  affectionately  in  all 
their  implications. 

From  this  study  three  conclusions  seemed  in 
variable  among  the  fighting  men — that  the  war  was 


UNIVERSITY  LEADERSHIP  135 

but  a  preparatory  safeguarding  of  the  world  so  that 
the  real  problems  might  be  grappled  with ;  that  these 
problems  would  be  solved  only  by  the  well-trained ; 
and  that  if  the  world  is  to  be  democratic,  good  train 
ing  should  be  made  accessible  to  all  men  and  women. 
In  their  brief  moments  of  leisure  the  soldiers  dis 
cussed  constantly  the  questions  political,  social  and 
economic,  which  now  confront  us,  and  noth 
ing  could  be  more  uniform  than  their  conviction 
that  to  take  part  in  solving  these  questions  one 
must  be  expert  and  prepared.  They  almost 
grasped  the  truth  too  often  unmentioned  by  those 
who  would  settle  the  affairs  of  the  world,  that 
justice  itself  is  not  to  be  achieved  simply  by  good 
intentions,  but  must  be  preceded  by  adequate  knowl 
edge.  With  such  a  temper  in  the  armies  it  is  not 
surprising  that  the  war  was  a  gigantic  debate  as 
well  as  a  conflict  of  arms.  Many  of  us  expected  the 
armistice  to  bring  the  kind  of  peace  which  is  silence. 
When  instead  it  seemed  to  let  loose  a  chaos  of  dis 
cussion,  we  were  disappointed.  We  forgot  that  the 
discussion  had  been  going  on  throughout  the  war, 
only  covered  over  by  heavy  artillery  and  by  the  cen 
sor.  Not  all  of  the  discussion,  of  course,  was  wise 
or  useful,  but  it  was  the  sincere  attempt  of  a  vast 
number  of  human  beings  to  use  their  minds,  many  of 
them  for  the  first  time;  and  those  who  saw  that 
awakening  wondered  at  the  eagerness  to  read,  to 
study,  to  be  informed,  at  the  fierce  hunger  for  bet 
ter  intellectual  equipment,  at  the  impatience  which 
turned  away  from  those  who  had  nothing  but  ad 
monition  to  offer,  and  at  the  attention  which  followed 
those  who  seemed  really  to  know  something  about 
anything.  Without  formulating  their  convictions 


136  DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS 

under  too  many  points,  our  armies  believed  anew 
that  men  and  women  should  have  a  decent  place  in 
the  world,  and  should  be  equipped  not  only  to  occupy 
that  place,  but  also  to  grow  out  from  it  into  the 
enjoyment  of  life  as  a  whole.  They  believed,  that 
is,  in  a  complete  education.  Whatever  may  have 
been  the  concern  of  the  diplomats,  our  fellow-citizen 
in  arms,  when  he  spoke  of  the  future,  seemed  but  to 
sound  variations  on  the  fine  ideal  written  into  the 
program  of  the  British  labor  party,  and  worthy  of 
being  written  into  all  plans  for  democracy, — to 
"  bring  effectively  within  the  reach  not  only  of  every 
boy  and  girl,  but  also  of  every  adult  citzen,  all  the 
training,  physical,  mental,  and  moral,  literary,  tech 
nical,  and  scientific,  of  which  he  is  capable." 

But  this  was  during  the  war.  What  reason  have 
we  for  hoping  that  this  intellectual  ferment  has  not 
quickly  subsided?  During  the  armistice  the  large 
number  of  American  soldiers  in  France  who  enjoyed 
opportunities  in  the  army  schools  and  in  French  and 
British  universities,  had  a  motive  toward  study, 
even  though  the  excitement  of  war  was  withdrawn. 
They  believed  that  expert  skill  would  hold  every 
strategic  position  in  the  new  era,  and  the  monoto 
nous  waiting  in  a  foreign  land  made  them  the  prey 
of  fears  lest  they  might  not  be  expert  enough  to 
earn  their  living  or  to  take  up  again  their  old  place 
in  society.  Those  who  had  no  trade  or  vocation 
were  eager  to  acquire  one,  and  those  who  already 
had  such  skill  were  eager  to  convert  it  into  richer 
living.  Now  that  we  are  at  home  again,  these  two 
motives  seem  to  operate  no  less  strongly  in  the 
majority  of  men,  and  the  second  motive  seems  es 
pecially  persuasive.  Those  Americans  who  have 


UNIVERSITY  LEADERSHIP  137 

been  taught  a  trade  or  a  profession  begin,  many 
of  them,  to  realize  that  they  have  not  been  taught 
to  live. 

All  classes  of  society  feel  this  motive  to  educa 
tion,  but  the  workingmen  perhaps  interest  us 
most,  since  they  are  taking  steps  to  help  themselves. 
The  establishment  of  workingmen 's  schools  or  col 
leges  abroad  and  the  first  scattered  attempts  to  es 
tablish  them  in  this  land,  can  mean  only  that  the 
worker  trained  in  his  craft  begins  to  suspect  the 
truth — that  without  education  also  in  the  things  of 
the  spirit,  in  the  world  of  ideas,  he  must  remain  the 
servant  or  at  least  the  passive  follower  of  other  men. 
He  who  works  with  his  hands  may  make  more  money 
than  they  who  follow  the  learned  professions,  but 
he  does  not  on  that  account  feel  that  his  life  is  as 
rich  as  theirs;  when  he  meets  them  face  to  face  he 
knows  that  in  some  way  which  seems  unjust  he  is 
their  inferior.  Knowledge  is  indeed  power,  and 
there  can  be  no  equality  among  men  until  there  is 
an  equal  opportunity  for  education.  The  students 
in  the  American  army  showed  an  interest  in  agricul 
ture  and  in  business,  but  they  showed  an  even  greater 
interest  in  history,  in  social  science,  in  literature  and 
in  the  fine  arts.  They  wished  to  earn  their  living, 
but  they  wished  also  to  live.  The  schools  which 
workingmen  have  established  abroad,  in  Belgium, 
for  example,  look  toward  liberal  culture,  toward 
raising  the  craftsman  to  an  intellectual  equality 
with  the  capitalist,  and  toward  making  profitable  his 
free  hours.  It  is  mortifying  to  scholars  that  when 
their  associate,  the  educational  expert,  proposes  a 
new  curriculum  for  training  the  world,  he  usually 
drops  those  subjects  which  if  wisely  taught  and  stud- 


138  DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS 

led  enrich  leisure,  and  he  stresses  those  which  at 
best  can  only  fatten  a  pay  envelope ;  whereas  when 
the  workman  founds  a  school  of  his  own,  he  asks 
like  a  Eenaissance  prince  to  enter  that  general  field 
of  knowledge  which  we  call  humane. 


This  difference  of  aim  is  the  one  thing  in  the  pres 
ent  situation  which  ought  to  alarm  us  who  are  pro 
fessional  educators.  Thousands  of  men  and  women 
to-day  crave  knowledge  and  desire  to  be  taught,  but 
it  is  not  clear  that  they  desire  to  be  taught  by  us. 
They  will  go  where  they  think  to  find  intellectual 
leadership,  but  possibly  they  will  not  look  for  that 
in  the  university.  The  university  ought  indeed  to 
lead,  to  provide  teachers  and  ideas  and  inspiration, 
but  perhaps  our  universities  and  our  colleges  too, 
for  that  matter,  are  not  in  the  proper  relation  to 
society  to  furnish  this  service.  They  receive  a  kind 
of  respect  from  the  world  at  large  and  they  seem 
not  likely  to  lack  students,  but  in  the  moment  when 
humanity  is  to  some  extent  conscious  of  an  intel 
lectual  ambition,  it  may  not  be  to  the  universities 
or  colleges  already  established  that  men  and  women 
will  turn,  nor  to  the  professional  educator.  It  is 
hardly  an  exaggeration  to  say  that  the  university 
and  the  professor  are  to-day  but  the  half-hearted 
resort  of  those  who  seriously  desire  to  know  the 
world  and  to  know  life. 

This  prejudice  is  not  surprising  if  we  recall  tEe 
beginnings  of  our  older  colleges.  Some  of  them 


UNIVERSITY  LEADERSHIP  139 

have  remained  small  colleges,  and  others  have  be 
come  universities;  for  the  moment,  however,  the 
terms  may  be  interchangeable,  since  with  us  in 
America  the  conditions  of  leadership  are  the  same 
for  the  college  in  its  sphere  as  for  the  higher  institu 
tion.  It  is  therefore  illuminating  to  recall  that  our 
colleges  were  usually  built  in  response  to  an  educa 
tional  need,  such  as  the  world  feels  to-day ;  that  their 
most  glorious  years  were  often  their  earliest,  and 
that  during  those  years  there  was  close  collaboration 
between  the  college  and  the  community.  The  stu 
dents  came  from  the  vicinity ;  it  was  for  them  that  the 
college  had  been  built,  and  not  infrequently  they 
boarded  with  the  townsfolk,  who  took  them  into  their 
homes  less  to  earn  money  than  to  help  in  their  educa 
tion.  The  influence  of  these  homes  was  for  many 
a  boy  no  small  part  of  his  training.  The  teachers 
also  and  the  trustees  were  usually  representatives 
of  the  community,  and  their  work  was  consecrated 
by  a  sense  of  usefulness  to  their  neighbors.  In  some 
colleges  the  neighbors  had  actually  built  the  halls 
with  their  own  hands,  and  in  all  of  them  the  public 
attended  the  commencement  exercises,  to  judge  by 
the  speeches  and  essays  of  the  graduates  whether 
the  boys  were  doing  as  the  community  had  the  right 
to  expect.  If  the  teacher  in  those  days  enjoyed  a 
prestige  upon  which  we  now  look  back  with  envy,  it 
was  because  he  had  earned  the  gratitude  of  his  fel- 
lowmen  by  the  great  services  he  rendered;  he  gave 
them  the  aid  they  desired.  So  long  as  the  college 
had  such  teachers,  it  continued  to  be  the  spiritual 
product  of  the  locality,  as  truly  a  flower  of  the  land 
scape  as  its  chapel  tower  seemed  to  be,  rising  from 
the  clustered  trees  of  its  campus. 


140  DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS 

Few  of  us  would  deny  that  the  colleges,  or  the 
universities  into  which  some  of  them  grew,  have  to 
a  certain  extent  lost  this  position  of  honor.  We  say 
that  times  have  changed,  and  that  the  American 
community  no  longer  asks  the  kind  of  help  scholar 
ship  is  qualified  to  give ;  we  imply  that  all  else  de 
teriorates,  but  our  colleges  retire  into  the  obscurity 
of  a  finer  and  finer  excellence.  There  is  another  ex 
planation,  however.  The  colleges  after  a  while  for 
got  that  their  life  was  bound  up  with  the  life  of 
the  community  of  which  they  were  the  product ;  they 
detached  themselves  from  the  landscape  and  became 
at  last  aliens  in  their  own  birthplace.  In  the  early 
days  the  college  trained  the  boys  of  the  neighbor 
hood  and  sent  them  into  the  world,  to  remote  places, 
to  be  good  citizens  and  to  bring  credit  to  their  home 
and  to  their  Alma  Mater.  In  time,  however,  the 
sons  of  honored  graduates  began  to  return  to  the 
campus  where  their  fathers  had  passed  their  youth. 
These  youngsters  could  admire  the  college,  but  they 
had  nothing  in  common  with  the  townsfolk,  from 
whom,  as  they  would  feel,  their  fathers  had  risen; 
and  to  the  college  unfortunately  it  began  to  seem 
more  creditable  to  be  training  the  sons  of  alumni 
even  though  they  came  from  afar,  than  to  be  helping 
those  boys  at  the  very  door  whose  parents  perhaps 
had  enjoyed  no  education  at  all.  The  estrangement 
from  the  community  followed  quickly,  once  the  col 
lege  took  such  an  attitude.  The  students  now  rarely 
belong  in  the  landscape;  the  townsfolk  regard  them 
as  strangers,  perhaps  a  bit  snobbish,  and  would  not 
care  to  receive  them  into  their  homes,  even  if  the 
students  would  condescend  to  be  so  entertained ;  the 
immediate  neighborhood  no  longer  attends  the  com- 


UNIVERSITY  LEADERSHIP  141 

mencement,  but  devotes  its  energies  to  selling  haber 
dashery  and  soda-water  to  student  patrons,  or  from 
time  to  time  considers  the  advisability  of  taxing  the 
college  property;  and  the  professor  is  ignored,  un 
less  by  his  own  personality,  he  makes  a  place  for 
himself  among  his  neighbors — for  in  his  scholarly 
functions  he  is,  like  the  college,  detached,  and  the 
community  has  little  occasion  to  know  him. 

Somewhat  in  this  condition,  as  it  seems  to  me,  are 
the  American  College  and  the  American  University, 
more  especially  the  institutions  in  the  East,  at  the 
moment  when  they  should  draw  to  themselves  the 
eyes  of  all  seekers  after  truth  and  life.  Their  plight 
is  that  of  the  fabulous  tree  which  having  sent  forth 
branches  so  long  that  they  touched  the  ground,  de 
cided  to  use  them  as  roots,  and  worked  itself  free 
at  the  trunk.  The  separation  may  prove  fatal,  but 
we  seem  to  think  of  it  as  an  achievement.  Our  col 
lege  catalogues  take  pains  to  show  that  the  students 
come  from  the  ends  of  the  earth,  but  never  boast 
that  the  majority  of  them  come  from  within  a  radius 
of  ten  miles.  If  we  are  of  the  academic  cult  and 
are  advising  a  boy  where  to  seek  his  education,  we 
will  of  course  point  out  the  advantage  of  going  far 
from  home.  Any  college  we  live  next  to  is  a  poor 
one. 

We  must  begin  again.  If  the  university  is  to  be 
our  intellectual  leader,  it  must  approach  with  sym 
pathy  the  community  in  which  it  is  placed,  and  must 
put  its  scholarship  at  the  disposal  of  its  neighbors. 
Let  the  foreign  student  be  welcome,  whether  he 
come  from  across  the  state,  or  across  the  continent, 
or  across  the  world ;  but  let  the  first  care  be  for  those 
within  our  gates.  Said  Emerson  to  the  New  Eng- 


DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS 

land  abolitionist  with  the  latest  news  from  Barba 
dos,  "Love  your  neighbor,  love  your  wood-chopper; 
why  this  incredible  tenderness  for  black  folk  a  thou 
sand  miles  away?"  The  spirit  of  our  times  says 
to  the  university,  "Serve  the  place  that  produced 
you;  why  this  ambition  to  teach  anybody,  so  he  be 
not  of  your  own  household  ?" 


ni 

If  the  university  would  really  serve  the  men  and 
women  around  it,  it  must  not  insist  on  solving 
the  problems  of  a  society  that  has  disappeared.  And 
if  it  asks  the  present  America  what  problems  to 
solve,  the  answer  will  show  more  often  the  wish 
to  do  than  the  wish  to  hear  about  something.  To 
day  we  would  live  more  deeply  than  before,  and 
since  to  live  requires  a  technique  as  well  as  a  theory, 
we  ask  for  the  kind  of  knowledge  that  can  be  con 
verted  immediately  into  living.  This  disposition  is 
as  strong  at  home  as  it  was  among  the  army  students 
abroad.  Offer  a  course  in  the  history  of  painting, 
in  the  history  of  music,  in  the  history  of  engineer 
ing,  and  you  will  have  few  students,  however  profit 
able  such  instruction  in  some  circumstances  might 
be ;  but  offer  to  teach  men  how  to  paint,  how  to  play 
the  piano,  how  to  be  engineers,  and  your  classes 
overflow.  For  us  Americans  there  is  no  permanent 
joy  in  being  a  looker-on. 

This  wish  to  practice  life  colors  our  thoughts  of 
our  two  principal  needs — the  need  of  skill  to  earn 
our  living,  and  the  equal  need  of  skill  to  enjoy  our 


UNIVERSITY  LEADERSHIP 

leisure.  Obviously  the  skill  to  earn  one's  living  is 
a  practical  need,  and  here  the  university  most  often 
hesitates  to  be  of  aid.  If  it  should  collaborate  with 
the  whole  community,  suggesting  the  answer  to  the 
problems  of  business,  of  industry  as  well  as  of  the 
professions,  many  scholars  fear  that  the  institution 
would  degenerate  into  a  vast  trade  school,  and  that 
the  spirit  of  scholarship  would  perish.  Whether  the 
university  ought  to  become  a  trade  school  depends 
on  what  kind  of  trade  school  we  mean.  There  is 
every  reason  why  the  teaching  of  trades  should  be 
enriched  by  contact  with  the  spirit  of  scholarship. 
The  living  we  earn,  whether  in  a  workshop  or  at  a 
desk,  is  but  a  door  to  life,  and  the  university  can 
show  us  to  what  good  things  of  the  spirit  our  trade 
or  profession  is  a  natural  entrance,  having  in  mind 
that  the  carpenter  does  not  wish  to  live  in  a  world 
simply  of  wood  and  tools,  nor  the  doctor  in  a  world 
of  sick-beds  and  medicine,  but  that  both  wish  to  ex 
ercise  their  calling  in  a  common  world  of  ideas.  I 
believe  it  is  true  that  those  who  work  with  their 
hands  consciously  desire  to  live  in  the  world  of 
ideas,  but  if  they  had  not  this  desire,  it  would  be 
the  duty  of  the  university  to  impart  it.  From  the 
windows  of  his  study  the  scholar  can  imagine  the 
whole  of  society  and  all  the  avenues  by  which  men 
and  women  must  be  served;  he  sees  what  the  car 
penter  can  contribute  to  the  safety,  the  comfort  and 
the  beauty  of  the  home,  he  sees  what  the  plumber 
achieves  for  the  public  health,  he  sees  how  vital  is 
the  ministry  of  him  who  brings  the  morning  milk  to 
the  house  of  children,  how  critical  to  heart  and  mind 
the  service  of  those  who  print  our  books,  how  large 
the  usefulness  of  those  who  carry  our  letters  and 


144.  DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS 

speed  tJie  exchange  of  the  world 's  ideas.  The  schol 
ar  can  see  all  this ;  why  should  he  not  ennoble  human 
toil  by  sharing  his  vision  with  the  carpenter,  the 
plumber,  the  milkman,  the  printer,  the  postman  1 
Surely  there  could  be  no  loss  to  scholarship  in  giv 
ing  them  a  sight  of  life  as  a  whole  and  of  the  dig 
nity  of  their  own  work  in  it.  Engineering  was  once 
thought  to  be  no  proper  concern  of  the  university, 
but  even  the  last  tardy  conservative  now  honors  the 
engineer  who  is  a  scholar  and  who  therefore  makes 
of  his  skill  a  social  and  a  spiritual  force.  Not  long 
ago  a  dentist  was  considered  no  better  than  a  tooth- 
carpenter,  but  the  presence  of  dental  schools  has 
not  injured  our  universities,  and  the  work  of  schol 
arly  dentists  throughout  the  nation  has  been  for 
the  advancement  of  science  and  the  happiness  of 
mankind.  Droll  though  the  prophecy  may  sound, 
we  shall  yet  train  our  scholar-carpenters  and  schol 
ar-plumbers,  who  will  make  their  contribution  to 
our  spiritual  sanity,  as  well  as  serve  us  with  their 
hands.  Is  there  danger  to  scholarship  here  ?  I  would 
rather  say  that  once  the  plumber  or  the  carpenter 
sees  the  bearing  and  the  implications  of  his  work, 
he  will  be,  in  the  words  of  one  of  my  colleagues,  lost 
to  mediocrity  forever.  We  shall  have  scholarly 
workmen  or  none  at  all,  for  without  some  play  of 
mind,  some  sufficient  meaning,  all  labor  now  begins 
to  seem  intolerable.  The  work  must  be  done,  but 
before  men  will  undertake  it  it  must  be  invested  with 
new  significance. 

The  second  need  of  us  all  to-day  is  skill  to  enjoy 
leisure.  We  shall  have  more  free  time,  but  what 
can  we  do  with  it?  Recently  Georges  Duhamel  wrote 
of  the  peril  to  F ranch  manners  and  culture,  now 


UNIVERSITY  LEADERSHIP  145 

that  the  laborer  has  an  eight-hour  day — some  extra 
leisure,  that  is,  which  the  French  poet  did  not  think 
his  countrymen  were  trained  to  profit  by.  If  leisure 
is  an  embarrassment  for  the  French,  with  their  ca 
pacity  for  self-entertainment,  their  wide-spread  pro 
ficiency  in  the  arts,  their  love  of  ideas  and  their 
ability  to  express  them,  what  is  it  for  us,  who  have 
so  few  resources  in  ourselves?  Even  now  our  free 
hours  bore  us ;  we  have  many  ideas  but  cannot'  ex 
change  them,  and  though  beautiful  arts  appeal  to  us, 
we  are  untaught  to  practice  them.  We  particularly 
need  that  teaching  which  has  gone  from  the  curric 
ulum — the  teaching  of  the  humanities,  of  the  things 
that  increase  the  enjoyment  of  leisure.  No  doubt  it 
is  vain  to  restore  them  in  their  old  form;  better  to 
build  them  up  again  by  training  all  the  humane 
aptitudes  of  which  we  are  conscious.  If  the  univer 
sity  has  lost  its  students  of  Greek,  let  it  serve  the 
larger  number  who  would  study  painting,  sculpture, 
singing,  writing,  dancing.  It  takes  courage  to  men 
tion  the  dancing  before  one's  scholarly  colleagues, 
but  the  truth  is  that  Americans  love  dancing  better 
than  any  other  art — I  had  almost  said,  better  than 
any  other  occupation.  The  soldiers  abroad  danced 
wherever  there  was  a  smooth  floor  and  a  little  music. 
The  fact  that  they  danced  with  each  other  showed,  I 
suppose,  that  it  was  the  art  which  interested  them. 
Even  when  there  were  girls  to  dance  with,  the  art 
transcended  courtesy;  she  who  danced  best  had  the 
partners.  If  dancing  is  our  one  talent,  why  should 
we  not  increase  it?  Serious  it  now  is;  why  should 
it  not  be  significant?  If  the  graduate  faculty  hesi 
tates  to  instal  a  practical  course  in  dancing,  how 
inconsistent  of  them  to  accept  a  documented  thesis 


146  DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS 

on  the  dancing  the  Greeks  did  some  time  ago.  I 
speak  of  dancing,  but  the  principle  concerns  all  the 
arts  in  which  we  have  made  a  beginning,  and  all  the 
pastimes  we  genuinely  love. 

If  our  use  of  leisure  is  to  be  satisfying  and  happy, 
we  must  learn  to  do  beautifully  and  significantly  the 
things  we  like  to  do — we  must  develop  them  into 
fine  arts ;  and  it  is  the  opportunity  of  the  university 
to  lead  in  this  development.  In  music  we  love  rag 
time;  the  opportunity  is  to  build  up  out  of  those 
rhythms  a  national  music,  noble  and  sincere.  Other 
schools  of  music  are  far  better  developed,  but  no 
other  so  well  expresses  us,  our  kind  of  humor,  our 
kind  of  sentiment.  If  in  a  hundred  years  ragtime  is 
transformed  into  the  art  it  should  become,  and  if 
we  university  professors  meanwhile  do  not  see  light, 
theses  may  be  written  on  the  early  symptoms  of 
American  -music  in  1919.  But  if  the  university  is  to 
be  a  leader,  it  will  help  create  the  art,  not  wait  to 
glean  in  the  footsteps  of  the  creators.  Let  us  say 
much  the  same  thing  of  the  cinema.  We  are  devoted 
to  it  heart  and  soul.  The  opportunity  then  is  to  raise 
it  from  an  appetite  of  the  nerves  to  an  art.  I  admit 
I  do  not  know  how  this  is  to  be  done,  but  that  is  only 
my  ignorance.  I  have  seen  the  soldiers  in  France 
by  the  thousands  watching  the  films  in  huts  and  halls 
and  dug-outs.  They  were  all  too  expert  in  what 
they  saw  not  to  know  that  the  performance  in  such 
conditions  must  be  poor.  It  seemed  that  they  were 
too  expert  to  be  satisfied  with  any  film  that  can  be 
seen  to-day.  One  had  a  queer  sense  that  they 
watched  the  screen  with  hunger  for  the  beauty  that 
will  some  day  appear  on  it.  All  arts  develop  out  of 
such  a  popular  interest,  whenever  the  leader  appears 


UNIVERSITY  LEADERSHIP  147 

to  direct  that  interest;  and  what  excuse  shall  we 
make,  if  the  university  is  not  equipped  for  such 
leadership  ? 


IV 

I  know  what  questions  will  arise  in  the  minds  of 
many  sound  scholars  and  good  citizens  when  this 
proposal  is  made,  to  put  the  universities  more  than 
ever  at  the  service  of  the  community.  They  will 
ask  if  in  this  program  there  is  not  danger  of  over 
looking  the  one  service  which  a  university  is  pecul 
iarly  destined  to  render,  the  service  of  scientific  in 
quiry.  It  is  well  to  impart  the  skill  to  earn  one's 
living  and  the  skill  to  enjoy  leisure,  but,  they  will 
say,  in  these  matters  perhaps  the  university  should 
be  content  to  impart  the  principles,  permitting  other 
agencies  to  direct  the  practice;  otherwise  we  may 
lose  the  ideal  of  truth-seeking  for  its  own  sake,  and 
by  descending  into  the  arena,  though  with  the  best 
of  motives,  we  may  ourselves  lose  some  of  the  vision 
it  was  our  wish  to  share.  The  pursuit  of  truth,  they 
will  say,  involves  sacrifice  and  abnegation;  the 
greatest  scholar  cannot  expect  to  be  also  the  pop- 
ularizer  of  his  scholarship,  and  the  university,  if  it 
would  serve  its  true  ends,  must  be  content  with  the 
discovery  of  truth,  leaving  the  spread  of  it  to  insti 
tutions  closer  to  the  daily  interests  of  men. 

With  much  of  this  questioning  attitude  I  sym 
pathize.  The  life  of  scholarship  does  indeed  involve 
abnegation  and  sacrifice,  and  there  are  many  sub 
jects,  of  the  utmost  importance  to  human  welfare, 
which  can  be  appreciated  only  by  the  specially 


148  DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS 

trained.  Some  aspects  of  truth  never  have  been 
popular  and  perhaps  never  will  be.  But  there  is 
a  difference  in  subjects ;  some  aspects  of  truth  have 
always  been  popular,  and  the  study  of  them  involves 
no  sacrifice  of  the  larger  audience,  nor  any  retreat 
into  esoteric  realms. 

There  is  danger  that  a  scholar,  overlooking  this 
difference,  may  come  to  regard  the  small  audience 
as  a  necessary  proof  that  his  scholarship  is  im 
portant  Certainly  a  perceptible  distrust  arises  in 
any  faculty  when  one  of  its  members  draws 
numbers  to  him.  "If  we  stooped  to  make  our 
subject  popular, "  they  seem  to  say,  "we  too  could 
have  such  a  following. "  But  the  truth  is  that  their 
subject  can  be  made  popular  or  it  cannot ;  if  it  cannot 
be  so  made,  there  is  no  opportunity  for  them  to 
"stoop,"  and  if  it  can  be  so  made,  I,  for  one,  find 
it  difficult  to  forgive  them  for  reserving  it  within 
a  limited  circle.  Those  subjects  which  are  most  the 
creations  of  the  human  mind  and  have  therefore  to 
the  greatest  degree  a  logical  and  necessary  architec 
ture — subjects  like  mathematics  or  the  sciences — 
must  be  studied  in  a  given  order;  if  we  have  not 
taken  the  earlier  steps,  we  cannot  take  the  later. 
But  those  subjects  which  at  every  stage  represent 
or  describe  the  same  thing — literature,  history,  phi 
losophy,  let  us  say,  which  in  every  age  and  in  all 
lands  give  an  account  of  life — these  subjects  can  be 
entered  at  any  point,  as  life  can  be  begun  at  any 
moment,  and  though  they  have  purple  patches, 
they  have  no  inaccessible  altitudes;  in  fact,  in 
these  subjects  the  altitudes  are  often  marked  by 
those  authors  who  have  had  the  widest  audience. 
In  our  university  and  college  catalogues,  as 


UNIVERSITY  LEADERSHIP  149 

any  one  can  see  who  cares  to  turn  the  pages  for 
a  few  successive  years,  the  teachers  of  literature, 
of  history  and  of  philosophy  have  recorded  their 
own  inability  to  define  what  is  an  elementary  course 
in  their  subject  and  what  is  an  advanced  course. 
Sometimes  we  teach  modern  thought  first,  and  af 
terwards  ancient  thought ;  sometimes  we  reverse  the 
order ;  sometimes  we  throw  chronology  to  the  winds, 
and  quite  simply  invade  the  subject  with  a  study  of 
miscellaneous  authors  or  periods.  It  really  makes 
little  difference.  Yet  the  scholar's  wish  to  have  his 
exclusive  moments  leads  the  teacher  of  literature  to 
yearn  for  some  difficulties  in  his  field  comparable  to 
the  splendid  obstacles  that  engage  the  biologist  or 
the  chemist,  and  having  no  difficulties  at  hand,  he 
creates  them.  Hence  the  arduous  advanced  courses 
in  Shakespeare,  let  us  say  (prerequisite,  Freshman 
English  and  at  least  two  other  English  courses  num 
bered  above  thirty).  Since  Shakespeare  designed 
his  art  for  a  fairly  average  audience,  one  suspects 
that  those  things  in  Shakespeare  which  only 
the  chosen  can  understand  are  not  Shakespeare 
at  all,  but  the  impediments  of  a  self -deceived  peda 
gogy. 

If  the  university  should  be  thrown  open  to  the 
world — if,  for  example,  we  allowed  in  our  class 
rooms  any  who  desired  to  enter,  there  might  at  first 
be  embarrassment  and  confusion,  but  there  would  be 
no  vulgarization  of  any  scholarship  that  really  is 
on  the  frontier  of  truth.  Those  classes  which  only 
the  few  can  follow,  would  be  attended  only  by  a  few. 
In  such  a  small  audience  I  should  recognize  the  pe 
culiarity  of  the  situation,  the  difficulty  of  the  subject, 
but  I  should  not  on  that  account  hold  the  scholar 


150  DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS 

necessarily  in  high  esteem.  Those  classes  which  any 
one  might  follow  would  be  attended  by  large  num 
bers.  In  those  numbers  I  should  recognize  again 
the  nature  of  the  subject,  but  I  should  not  count  the 
attendance  necessarily  to  the  credit  of  the  teacher. 
I  should  admire  only  the  scholar,  whether  in  the 
narrow  paths  of  science  or  in  the  open  fields  of  let 
ters,  who  sought  truth  with  his  whole  heart,  who 
shared  it  with  the  greatest  number  of  his  fellows 
whom  he  could  reach,  and  who  so  envisaged  his  sub 
ject  that  it  became  a  measure  of  the  whole  of  life, 
and  therefore  of  the  whole  community.  Truth  is 
for  all  men,  but  some  men  are  less  prepared  for  it 
than  others.  The  task  of  preparing  the  more  igno 
rant  is  a  necessary  task ;  in  the  eyes  of  scholarship, 
however,  it  is  sometimes  considered  less  dignified 
than  the  companionship  of  the  learned.  No  doubt 
it  would  be  a  waste  of  genius  to  set  a  great  mathe 
matician  teaching  arithmetic  in  the  third  grade.  But 
if  one  says  to  us,  "I  cannot  cheapen  my  pursuit  of 
truth  by  making  my  work  available  for  the  many — 
only  the  trained  mind  can  appreciate  what  I  am  do 
ing,  "  we  may  be  pardoned  for  finding  in  the  re 
mark  no  proof  of  greatness  nor  of  scholarship,  but 
rather  an  indication  that  the  speaker  values  too  high 
his  own  intelligence  and  too  low  the  intelligence  of 
others. 

Let  the  university  remain  indeed  the  citadel  of 
scholarship  and  of  disinterested  research — rather  I 
would  say,  let  it  become  such  a  citadel.  But  let 
us  remember  also  that  true  scholarship  has  a  kin 
dling  power  upon  all  who  approach  it.  For  that  rea 
son  I  would  permit  the  community,  men  and  women, 
to  come  as  near  to  scholarship  as  they  may  wish. 


UNIVERSITY  LEADERSHIP  151 

Pernaps  they  may  astonish  us  by  the  loftiness  of 
their  own  conception  of  scholarship.  At  least  they 
would  be  more  likely  to  approach  scholarship  in  a 
wholesome  spirit  if  they  could  see  that  in  the  thought 
of  the  university  itself  even  the  highest  scholarsEip 
touches  hands  naturally  with  a  humble  desire  to 
know.  Let  us  therefore  break  down  still  further  the 
artificial  walls  between  what  have  been  wrongly 
considered  separate  fields  and  separate  stages  of 
knowledge.  Life  is  one,  and  society  under  all  its 
complexities  is  one,  and  the  teaching  of  the  univer 
sity,  whatever  the  differences  of  emphasis,  must  re 
gard  the  whole  life  and  all  the  needs  of  society. 

To  think  of  life  and  society  as  a  whole  is  to  re 
turn  to  our  present  needs  and  to  our  hope  of  satis 
fying  them.  An  adequate  motive  toward  civilization 
can  be  discerned  in  man's  renewed  desire  to  be  com 
pletely  a  man.  Therefore  we  have  courage  to  dream 
of  the  worker  as  intellectually  master  of  the  whole 
plan  in  which  he  builds  a  section;  to  conceive  of 
mankind  at  their  tasks  as  differing  only  as  to  the 
tools  and  the  materials,  not  at  all  as  to  the  dignity 
nor  the  value  of  the  labor;  to  conceive  of  mankind 
at  play  as  differing  only  in  their  talents,  but  all  alike 
trained  artisans  of  happiness  and  beauty.  This  part 
of  our  ideal  may  be  realized  with  or  without  our  aid. 
We  have  courage  also  to  imagine  the  community,  at 
work  or  at  play,  finding  its  unity,  its  communion, 
its  guidance  in  the  university.  This  part  of  our 
ideal  will  be  realized  when  the  university  says  to 
the  community:  Whatever  you  do,  whether  for  use 
or  for  pleasure,  can  be  done  beautifully.  I  am  here 
to  show  you  the  way.  Whatever  you  do  has  a  mean 
ing  also.  I  am  here  to  tell  you  what  it  meows.  That 


152  DEMOCRACY  AND  IDEALS 

1  am  here  at  all,  after  the  centuries,  is  a  sign  that 
those  long  dead,  who  bade  me  say  this  to  you, 
touched  the  work  of  their  hour  with  the  enduring 


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